As a multinational insurer recently entering Sri Lanka, AIA wanted to strengthen its connection with the local market. Our challenge was to find a real life solution to a real life problem that connected us to the average Sri Lankan in a way that didn’t look commercial or forced, capturing the brand’s essence – 'The Real Life Company'. We found an opportunity in ‘Vesak’, the most important day in the Sri Lankan Buddhist calendar. During Vesak, devotees take newspaper pages with them to use as floor covers as they sit/kneel on temple grounds to listen to Buddhist scripture. However, the ink from the newsprint often stains their traditional White clothes. This prompted us to give the devotee a clean newspaper space that connected to their spiritual devotions and stayed with them throughout the day, rather than doing the usual print ad of a ‘message’ from the Buddha’s teachings like most corporates do. Therefore, taking into account how brand awareness was driven on a nationwide scale thanks to the socially beneficial nature of the exercise, AIA’s ‘Space to Pray’ ad had all necessary PR elements in place for it to become a much talked about and praised undertaking.

The key PR elements of this execution are demonstrated through the meticulous planning and awareness of the target audience that has gone into the making of this piece. In addition, our newspaper mat also breathed much needed new life to the print category, which was otherwise deemed as a dying medium in Sri Lanka.

The day prior to the Vesak festival - the most important festival in the Sri Lankan Buddhist calendar - we published our solution - a blank double-spread ad completely free of ink except for a Buddhist-inspired border and a simple message that asked devotees to take our clean newspaper mat with them to temple instead of taking a newspaper page to honor the day. 'Lankadeepa' a Sri Lankan national newspaper with the highest volume count and widest distribution reach, helped take our 'Space to Pray' newspaper mat nationwide.

The power of AIA's newspaper mat generated direct appreciation of our honest effort and made ‘Lankadeepa – the national daily that carried the ad – sell out. In addition, temple grounds all over the country were covered with our paper mats. Immediately after the ad, AIA were also able achieve their immediate business target of increasing the number of general inquiries by up to three times; which meant that our objective was exceedingly well achieved.