When Sri Lanka’s economy collapsed in 2022, paper prices surged 300% almost overnight. For most students, the cost of notebooks became a stretch. For visually impaired students who needed Braille writing books, which require thick, specialised paper capable of holding embossed dots without tearing, the increase made the material effectively unaffordable. Schools could not source it. Families could not fund it. An entire population of blind students faced a year without the basic tool required to write.
Geometry Global Sri Lanka, part of Ogilvy, found the solution sitting in every household in the country.
The Insight
A used notebook, finished by a sighted student, is typically discarded. The pages carry ink markings, notes, underlines, and annotations. But the paper itself has a second life that the original user cannot access. Blind students cannot see old markings. What looks like a finished, unusable book to a sighted person looks like blank paper to someone reading by touch.
The insight was immediate: every used notebook in Sri Lanka was a potential Braille writing book. The only barrier was distribution.
The Campaign
ProMate, a stationery brand operated by PrintXcel, launched a nationwide donation drive inviting the public to contribute gently used notebooks instead of discarding them. A short film was produced and distributed to communicate the idea and generate community participation. The response exceeded expectations at every scale: schools, offices, households, and community groups across the country contributed notebooks in volumes that eventually built a donation network large enough to supply Braille writing materials to visually impaired students in every government school across Sri Lanka.
The initiative was sustained for over two years following the initial campaign, covering the full duration of the economic crisis’s most acute phase and extending into the recovery period.
Nadeera Warawita, Creative Group Head at Geometry Global Sri Lanka and the campaign’s ideator, described the experience directly: “We set out to solve a real problem. The recognition the campaign has received is humbling, but the true reward, as a creative, was seeing children use these books and being given the opportunity to continue their learning. Knowing our work made a meaningful difference; that’s what mattered most.”
The Response
Sri Lanka’s first visually impaired Member of Parliament, Sugath Wasantha de Silva, commented on what the campaign meant from inside the beneficiary community: “As a social activist and a visually impaired person who intimately understands the struggle of not being able to get an education without paper, I can say this is an outstanding endeavour. The fact that the value of this initiative has been recognised beyond our shores and gained international appreciation fills me with immense pride and happiness as a Sri Lankan and a member of the beneficiary community.”
The Awards
Second Life Notebooks has become the most internationally awarded single campaign in Sri Lankan advertising history. Between 2024 and 2025, the campaign accumulated 17 awards and shortlist honours across Dragons of Asia, EPICA, Spikes Asia, AdFest, Clio Awards, D&AD, and four shortlist nods at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The volume and range of recognition across major global festivals is unprecedented for a campaign that originated in Sri Lanka and ran with no international media budget.
Lalith Sumanasiri, Managing Director of Ogilvy Digital, Ogilvy Media and Geometry Global Sri Lanka, described the campaign’s underlying logic: “With Second Life Notebooks, we identified a critical need in society and connected it to what our client could uniquely offer. This campaign demonstrates how creativity, when grounded in purpose and strategy, can deliver not just awards, but real, measurable impact.”
Why It Works Beyond Its Context
The campaign is structurally simple enough that its logic translates instantly across any cultural context. A used notebook is a waste. To a blind student, it is material. The gap between those two facts is where the entire idea lives. No technology was required. No funding beyond logistics. No infrastructure beyond an existing stationery brand’s distribution relationships and a short film that communicated the need.
The economic crisis that created the problem also created the community conditions in which people were primed to give. Sri Lankans in 2022 and 2023 were living through a shared national hardship that had built a strong disposition toward mutual support. The campaign arrived inside that environment and converted a general willingness to help into a specific, practical action with an immediate, visible outcome.
Campaign Name: Second Life Notebooks
Agency Name: Geometry Global Sri Lanka (part of Ogilvy)
Brand Name: ProMate / PrintXcel
Location: Sri Lanka (national)
