Themed ‘Will you race ahead of the rest?” the 14th SLIM Brand Excellence invites brands to take up the challenge of racing ahead of the rest and fight head-on in the business world to be the “Champion”. 

The much awaited SLIM Brand Excellence kicked off with a briefing for media on June 30th. This is the flagship event organized by the national body of marketing; Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) with its mandate to initiate, enrich and uplift best practices in marketing. 

As the national body of marketing, SLIM takes initiatives to encourage strategic and result oriented thinking in the fields of brand development, sales, advertising and research through initiatives; brand excellence, NASCO, Effie’s and Peoples awards respectively.  Year on year SLIM has raised the bar in each of these programmes. 

SLIM Brand Excellence 2015 will see a new category – Online Brand of the Year – where brands using internet or internet related mediums to generate 80 percent or more of its revenue can compete.

“Year on year SLIM Brand Excellence have grown by both scale and quality. This is the only awards show in the country which rewards brands and brand custodians excelling in the brand marketing arena.  Criterion developed by SLIM Brand Excellence is adopted by some organizations in real life where organizational brand planning function is following the step by step approach of brand intent, content, process and performance. Hence we encourage marketers to attempt following this well-crafted and proven process first and victory comes second. ,” says SLIM President, Ruwan Liyanagamage.

Participants can compete in thirteen categories, including the newly introduced ‘Online Brand of the Year. The others are: Product Brand of the Year, Service Brand of the Year, Innovative Brand of the Year, Turnaround Brand of the Year, Local Brand of the Year, Best New Entrant of the Year, International Brand of the Year, SME Brand of the Year, CSR Brand of the Year, Export Brand of the Year, B2B Brand of the Year and Regional Brand Recognition Award. 

Explaining about the newly added “online brand of the year” category, President SLIM, further stated; “With the growing internet and smart phone penetration in the country, online is becoming a significant medium where brands and channels are born in the internet. Hence, we saw the importance of introducing this category where products, services or online properties such as online advertising and web development etc. will be able to compete in this category.” 

This year’s panel of judges represent a wide range of professions and industries. The expertise and proficiency they bring including experience in international markets will no doubt help the panel to single out the outstanding from the excellent. With increasing number of participants, the task of the judges becomes more and more challenging,” said Head of the Panel of Judges, Nasser Majeed, CEO, Softlogic Retail Pvt Ltd. 

Expressing her appreciation for the cooperation extended by big names in the private sector in making Brand Excellence 2015 a success, Project Chairperson Thilanka Abeywardena, said that if not for the ready response of the sponsors it would not be possible to plan and execute a mammoth task as this. 

Taking the lead in the sponsorship of the event are Singer PLC (Corporate Sponsor), Etisalat (Official Telecommunications Partner), Signal (Platinum Sponsor) and HNB Assurance (official insurance partner).

The competition is now open for entries which will close on 27th July, 2015. 
The awards ceremony will be held on 5th November at the BMICH.