With a motto to seek diverse opportunities to match and grow his skill, Nivran Weerakoon, the Managing Director of Media Monkey (PVT) Ltd, stands to promote a non-constrained mindset that goes beyond fixed scopes of specific industries. With his foundations in finance that contribute to the impactful growth of his career, Nivran took the initiative to expand beyond the fundamentals of his learning to make his motto in life a reality.

His driving force to become a leader, combined with his mantra in life, has led him to diversify in many industries. Nivran’s outstanding career portfolio includes him as a Director in Royal Ceramics Lanka PLC, Delmege Limited, Fly Lankan Asia (PVT) Ltd, Kasper Global (PVT) Ltd and former director of Lanka Electricity Company (PVT) Ltd, in some of these companies he had the opportunity to be guided by the iconic business magnate Dhammika Perera who has been an immense influence and inspiration to Nivran’s career and life, instilling a growth mindset, positivity and resilience which are key components that drive him towards success.

With an impressively diverse exposure to many trades, Nivran invested his potential to study and gain an in-depth understanding of the advertising industry before leading Media Monkey, which was previously known as Wicks Advertising & Marketing that dated back to a history of operating since 1958. Under the guidance of Nivran, the enterprise was reinvigorated with new life to embark on its next phase of growth.

Concentrating on the core concept of delivering irreplaceable services to their clients with the motive of growing the business, Media Monkey took its initial step to reinvent advertising and marketing with the hope of establishing its name among the trusted clientele. Accomplishing this and a winning attitude whilst pitching for clients proactively helped them drive their businesses and make people believe in an entity, which seemed fresher amongst the bigger names.  Driven by an ambition to establish themselves as a noteworthy player in the industry, they consistently catered to their clients with perseverance even when they were not chosen the first time around. With consistency, they gained momentum and reached the point where they are today, serving clients who are industry leaders in their respective fields and standing proud as an enterprise assisting some multinational brands.

The highlighting quality of consistency remains the reason for the success of driving Media Monkey to its current state despite the disheartening thoughts of doubts around the enterprise’s ability to survive. The company stood their ground to grow and work beyond the force that tried to pull them down because of their initial lack of experience in a specific space. Nivran’s perseverance to lead the enterprise to success despite lacking knowledge is something one should strive to adopt. Appreciating the ability to face diversity going beyond the bounds of comfort zones, he firmly believes that the diverse exposure to many fields directly contributed to his leadership methods’ success.

The new age shift to digital makes it more critical for agencies to deliver value to their clients since an investment in digital advertising can be measured far more effectively than with other forms of traditional media. Further, digital improves engagement rather than being a mere push-based and one-way strategy of communication.  Furthermore, with the emergence of a far greater number of entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka, digital advertising allows Sri Lankans to make their mark globally with their unique product/service offerings. Similarly, the shift to digital makes it possible for advertising services to be offered by global players either as agencies or even as freelancers with competitive prices to Sri Lankan entities.  Therefore, agencies need to deliver significant value and continuously up their game to survive and thrive in this market. With that, Nivran believes that Sri Lanka has a substantial proportion of budgets allocated for traditional media, so digital as a mandatory platform in clients’ marketing strategies is now taking shape and gaining traction.

Media Monkey firmly holds on to a culture where Nivran’s team members have a growth mindset.  This growth mindset primarily starts with delivering true value to achieve their clients’ potential.  Therefore, at all times, Nivran pushes his team to deliver great creatives and thorough, well-thought strategies to their clients to drive growth for their respective businesses.  And with that, to provide this value, as a team, they seek to grow their skill sets either by gaining knowledge or by experimenting with new methods of executing a specific assignment. This contributed to personal growth and the organization’s progress, which eventually led to the financial development of the business and the team. However, Nivran believes that this growth is only plausible if there is a common pursuit for learning at the organisation’s heart regardless of the position or assigned scope of work.

Nivran maintains that developing fully integrated campaigns across platforms backed by research and strategy will be the point of differentiation. This research may be in the form of market research, industry-specific research, consumer behavioural research and other variants of research to understand markets, which are essential in propelling a company to its next growth phase. Media Monkey has shifted towards this approach. This has helped companies that they work with transform their internal business processes or make amendments to their product/service offerings before launching a campaign.  As a result, far greater success has been noted, and this has even led the company to play a more strategic role in some of our client’s organisations. 

Concerning growth, looking at market expansion overseas as they are already serving some international clients, the company hopes to expand their global presence in the year ahead. At the same time, Nivran continues to overcome challenges and break beyond the conventional limits of his industries.