Five brands. Five teams. Three days to build a brand grid, a Cannes-worthy film, and a landing page — all rooted in stories only Sri Lanka could tell.
Sri Lankan brands are invisible to the world — not because they are bad, but because nobody has bothered to tell their stories with the craft and confidence they deserve.
Your challenge: build a brand world that makes a panel feel something. Not just something pretty. Something true. The brand must be impossible to ignore, impossible to mistake for something foreign, and impossible to forget.
You spent the workshop learning to use AI tools. This is not a continuation of learning. This is the application of everything — under real pressure, on a real brief, with a real audience at the end. Treat it like your first client. Because one day it will be.
Anyone can prompt an AI to make a generic brand. The real skill is making something that could only come from here. From the way we argue, the way we eat, the way we laugh at ourselves. That specificity is what separates good work from great work.
Every single deliverable must pass one test: "Could this brand exist anywhere else in the world?" If the answer is yes — go back and dig deeper. Sri Lanka is not the backdrop. It is the story.
A brand grid that could be handed to a designer. A film that could win a creative award. A landing page that could actually sell something. All three must feel like one world — built in three days, by you, with AI as your creative partner.
Brands are drawn at random. No swaps. No negotiations. Part of the challenge is falling in love with what you have been given.
Strategy, story, direction, and judgment must come from you. AI executes. You think. If the AI made a decision you cannot explain, it does not count as your work.
Every phase has a checkpoint. You must show your research, your ideation, your moodboard — not just your final output. Process is scored.
Not the setting. Not the colour scheme. The story. If your Sri Lankan insight could swap for any other culture without losing meaning, it fails this rule.
No partial submissions. An incomplete deliverable scores zero for that category. Plan your time accordingly. Day 3 is for finishing, not starting.
Each team draws one brand at random. The film story is yours to figure out — no direction is given. Study all five. On draw day you will only have a few minutes before the build begins.
Sri Lanka's first luxury three-wheeler experience brand. Leather seats. Curated playlists. Drivers who are part philosopher, part tour guide, part comedian. The tuk-tuk has always been the icon of Sri Lankan movement — Tuk Life is what happens when you stop apologising for it and start celebrating it.
Your page must make someone who has never been to Sri Lanka desperately want to be in one of these vehicles — and make someone who lives here realise they have been missing something right outside their door.
What happens when a coconut gets tired of being underestimated. Natural. Electrolyte-rich. Zero artificial anything. Positioned squarely against Red Bull and Monster — with the cultural credibility those brands will never have in this country.
Make someone reach for Pol Power instead of whatever foreign brand they were about to buy. Cultural pride for Sri Lankans. Natural energy for the health-conscious. Both at once is the goal.
A premium herbal skincare brand rooted in Sri Lankan ayurvedic tradition. Recipes passed from grandmother to mother to daughter for generations — now formulated and delivered to a world spending thousands on Korean skincare that was never as good as what your aunty put on your face with her own hands.
Must feel premium enough to convert someone who shops at Sephora, while feeling real enough that a woman in Kurunegala recognises herself in it. That is a very narrow needle to thread. Thread it.
Takes curd and treacle — served in a clay pot — and positions it as the artisan, slow-food, emotionally resonant experience it always was. Not gimmicky. Not fusion. Just curd and treacle, made with total care, in the clay pot it was born in.
Should feel like a love letter to a thing that was never properly celebrated. Make it feel inevitable — like the world was always going to arrive here eventually. Kiri & Co just got there first.
Sri Lanka's first AI event planning assistant — trained on every Sri Lankan wedding, aluth avurudu, office party, and funeral reception that has ever gone wrong. It knows every caterer in Colombo. It knows which venue floods in April. It knows you need to invite the cousins even if you do not want to.
Every Sri Lankan who reads it should think: yes, I needed this in 2019 when the caterer arrived at the wrong venue. Give them that moment of recognition.
Each phase has a purpose. Each checkpoint is real. Do not skip a phase to jump to the pretty part — judges will see the gaps in your thinking. The process is half the work.
Draw your brand. Read the full brief before touching any tool. Assign roles — who owns identity, who owns video, who owns the landing page?
Research your target audience deeply. What do they read, watch, spend on? What do they secretly want? Look at global competitors — not to copy, but to understand the space.
Find 3–5 very specific Sri Lankan truths connected to your brand. If AI can generate your insight without context, it is not specific enough. The hints in the brief are a starting point, not an answer.
Pull 15–20 references from brands in a similar space. Decide what to borrow and what to reject entirely.
Write your brand in one sentence. Then one word. Then an emoji. Use AI to generate 20 positioning angles, then argue for one until you all believe it. If you cannot argue for it passionately, it is not the right positioning.
Write three possible story directions — each rooted in a different Sri Lankan insight. Choose one. Write the arc: setup, turn, payoff. Read it out loud. If it does not land spoken, it will not land on screen.
Sketch — on paper — what your landing page looks like. What is in the hero? What is the CTA? What is the one moment that makes someone feel something? No web tools yet. Think first.
Write five sentences in your brand's voice: Instagram, press release, at a party, product label, complaint response. This reveals whether your voice is real or generic.
Build a moodboard communicating the visual world of your brand — colour feeling, typography personality, texture, photography style. This is your creative compass. Every subsequent design decision refers back to this.
Build a 6–8 frame visual reference set for the film. What films or commercials feel like the energy of your story? These become the reference images you feed AI video tools. Do not generate yet. Reference first.
Narrow to 3–4 colours with rationale for each. Two typefaces — display and body. Every choice must have a reason rooted in positioning. "It looks nice" is not a reason.
Generate logo concepts guided by your moodboard. Aim for 20+ variations before narrowing. Look for the one that feels inevitable — not clever, inevitable. Then refine in vector tools.
Build the 6-panel grid: logo in use, colour palette with hex codes and cultural rationale, typography in use, brand voice panel (3 sentences), texture element, hero image. All six panels must feel like the same family.
Every team shows their brand grid. Two-minute silent review of each other's work. Then five minutes to defend creative choices before returning to the build.
Before generating a single frame, map your story into 8–12 shots. What does each shot show? What emotion? What prompts? AI film production without a shot list is guesswork.
Generate anchor images first — hero frame, emotional peak, final shot. Generate at least three versions of each key frame. The first generation is rarely the best.
Animate key frames shot by shot. Evaluate each clip for consistency of character, lighting, and mood before moving on. Never try to generate the whole film at once.
Generate an original music track. It should feel Sri Lankan without being cliché — do not just put tabla under everything. Generate at least five options before choosing.
Write the script first — out loud, timed. Then generate the voice. A Sri Lankan accent is always an option and sometimes the most powerful choice. Do not default to American-neutral.
Edit all clips into the final 60–90 second film. Pace matters as much as content. Apply colour grading for visual consistency. This phase separates a polished film from a collection of clips.
Layer sound: music track, voiceover, and ambient sound design. The moment your film goes silent should be intentional. Mix and balance all three audio layers.
Add brand name reveal, any caption text, and the final tagline card using your brand typography. The tagline card is often the most remembered frame of any brand film.
Export at 1080p minimum. Watch it back on a phone screen. If the emotion lands on a phone, it will land anywhere. If it only works on a big monitor, you have more work to do.
Write all landing page copy before opening any web tool. Hero headline. Subheadline. Body copy. Social proof. CTA. If the copy does not work on a blank document, it will not work on a beautiful page.
Build the landing page using your brand identity. Hero section: brand name, hook line, hero image or video, primary CTA. Everything below the fold deepens the desire created above it.
Every landing page must contain one moment — a line, an image, micro-copy — that makes the judge smile. Not a joke. A moment of recognition. Find it, put it somewhere unexpected.
Open your page on three different screen sizes. Fix everything. Share with someone who has not seen the brief and ask: "Would you buy this?" Their hesitation is your brief.
Brand problem (60s) → Cultural insight (90s) → Brand grid (90s) → Film screening (90s) → Landing page (60s) → One thing you are most proud of (30s) → Panel Q&A (3 mins). Rehearse at least twice out loud. Timing yourself is not optional.
Why is this brand Sri Lankan and not from anywhere else? — If this brand were a person, describe their worst quality. — What would you change about the film if you had another day? — Which competitor does this brand beat, and how?
Visual craft, identity coherence, cultural reasoning behind every choice
Story, emotion, Sri Lankan truth, production quality, music and sound
Copy clarity, design quality, CTA logic, the one smile moment
Confidence, defence, how well choices are explained under pressure
| Category | Earns full marks | Loses marks |
|---|---|---|
| Brand Grid | Every panel has a reason. Colours have cultural logic. Typography has personality. The grid feels like a real brand world, not a template filled in. | Generic choices with no rationale. Colour palettes that could belong to any brand. A logo that looks like the first result generated. |
| The Film | The story makes the panel feel something. The Sri Lankan insight is specific. Visual consistency throughout. The music is right, not just present. | A clip reel with no story. Generic inspirational music. A Sri Lankan insight that is actually a stereotype. Inconsistent visual quality. |
| Landing Page | The hero hook stops you scrolling. Copy sounds like the brand. CTA is clear and contextually earned. Page works on mobile. | Hero copy that could be from any brand. A CTA before the reader is convinced. Stock-looking imagery. Broken mobile layout. |
| Pitch | They know exactly why every decision was made. They can answer the hardest question without hesitation. They make the panel want to invest. | Cannot explain choices beyond "it looked good." They lose time. Cannot answer "why is this Sri Lankan?" with specificity. |
Awarded separately by the facilitator. Goes to the team that threw themselves most fully into the brief — regardless of how polished their final work was. For courage, commitment, and the team that made the room believe most completely in what they built. There is no points value. But there is a trophy.
Teams that skip research to jump into design always look like they did. The judges have seen enough work to tell when shortcuts were taken. Do the thinking. It shows.
A Sri Lankan insight that feels like a Wikipedia article is not an insight. An observation so specific it makes one person say "that is exactly my aunt" is an insight. Go small to go universal.
Beautiful images set to music is not a film. A film has a character with a want, an obstacle, and a resolution. If your film is just visuals, you have made a screensaver.
The landing page will only be as good as the copy on it. Build the design around words that work, not words that fit. If you write copy after design is done, you compromise both.
Generate many, select few, direct constantly. The teams that lose accept the first output. The teams that win rejected 30 outputs before finding the one that felt inevitable.
No AI tool will tell you when the story does not feel right. No algorithm catches the joke that lands wrong for a Sri Lankan audience. Your team is the cultural intelligence layer. Trust each other.
Sri Lanka's greatest creative gift is its capacity for self-aware, warm humour. Use it. The brands that win often make the judges laugh before they make them feel. Both are goals.
40 points is deliberate. Story is the hardest thing. Anyone can make a logo. Not everyone can make a Sri Lankan aunty cry and laugh in 90 seconds. That is the bar.
Every tool you could possibly need — from image generation to 3D modelling to sound design. Click any tool to open it directly. Highlighted tools are the ones we recommend starting with.