Seylan Bank won a Bronze award for its communication campaign on its premier savings product Seylan Sure, at the recently concluded Effie Awards, organised by the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing. 
Winning the only award in this category (where no Golds or Silvers were awarded) for the effectiveness of its communication campaign, Seylan once again demonstrated its ability to break new grounds in testing the pulse of its target market and being in sync with its hopes and aspirations in saving with ‘the bank with a heart’.
In a 360 degree communication campaign which addressed and appealed to the average saver/income earner, the bank used an idiom which had a true spirit of the Sri Lankan culture which when translated means, “Don’t wait for something that will never happen” to express a stark truism which it related directly to its campaign, bringing it the sweeping success it desired to grow its savings base.
Interestingly, the Seylan Sure brand had won a number of awards during 2014 from many forums including, Marketing Campaign of the year and best Loyalty programme at the Global Marketing Excellence awards, Excellence in Integrated Marketing Communication at the third Asian Customer Engagement Forum Awards and also a merit award for the best television commercial at Sumathi Tele Awards 2014.
The idea was brought to life using the popularly known Sri Lankan idioms that showcased the futility of waiting for something that cannot happen, such as ‘kalu kaputa sudu vena thuru’ (waiting until the black crow turns white) or ‘molgahe dalu enathuru’ (waiting for the pestle to bear leaves) and ‘kukula biththara damana thuru’ (waiting until a rooster lays eggs).
“We are delighted with this win and wish to thank Triad advertising, our creative agency partner, for working tirelessly with the marketing and liability products management team and the branch staff at the bank for bringing this campaign to life and ensuring a 360 degree campaign and leading us to tremendous market success which exceeded our targets,  Seylan Bank’s DGM responsible for Liability Product Management, Personal Banking, Digital Alternative Channels, Marketing and Housing Loans Product Management, Tilan Wijeyesekera said. 
The bank used an integrated marketing campaign with an advertising campaign on electronic and print media, backed by a town/office/factory storming campaigns communicating the futility of lottery style promotions and the ‘sure’ benefits of Seylan Sure.
The ‘sure benefits’ of Seylan Sure were also communicated to potential customers through a joint SMS campaign with mobile service providers. The bank also used social media to communicate to potential customers through engaging campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google placement ads. 
In a truly insightful savings reward scheme, the bank drew its entire customer base into its fold, assuring them special sure rewards and gifts in celebration of its special milestones in life.  The rewards scheme offered all customers “sure’ gifts at marriage, at the birth of every child, for surgery and on the 60th birthday, in recognition of senior citizenship.
Seylan Sure is the only scheme with sure gifts for personal savings account holders and personal current account holders, to receive these non-repayable cash grants and gifts for milestones in life. All savings and current account holders with a minimum balance of Rs.20,000 for a continuous period of six and 12 months are eligible for these gifts. 
A further challenge was to bring out the gifts offered by the account, as most potential customers did not know about the benefits. The objectives were to mobilize the saving deposits during the period, enhance the corporate image of the bank, create opportunity for cross selling and up-selling at branches, increase new customers to the bank and conversions from other banks, prevent erosion of savings base to competition and achieve low-cost deposits targets for 2014.