Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing launched the 21st Edition
of the SLIM Brand Excellence Awards 2022 on August 22nd 2022, on a quest to celebrate
brands that have kept their growth strategy alive despite challenging circumstances. This year’s
edition, aptly themed, ‘Mettle of Resilience’, has been launched with a brand-new evaluation
process. This was briefed in depth at an event held on September 5th at JAIC Hilton.
The SLIM Brand Excellence Awards looks to bestow five primary and ten special awards to
recognise the efforts of brands that have managed to disrupt local and global markets through
the tactful coupling of strategy, creativity and innovation to take their operations to the next
level.
The audience at the briefing session was welcomed by the president of Sri Lanka Institute of
Marketing, Nuwan Gamage, who stressed the need for marketers to step up to help take Sri
Lanka’s branding forward, which he stated was a direct solution to the current issues. The Head
of Jury, Imal Fonseka and the Project Chairperson, Kavi Rajapaksha, then took the audience
through the latest evaluation criteria, which would support both the entry crafting process and
the second-round presentations.
The Q&A session that followed was rich with questions about the latest process and what the
jury expectations are were clearly discussed with the help of many questions that came both
from the physical audience present at the venue and the digital audience joining online.
The briefing was enriched by the two sessions carried out by the official creative partner Shift
Integrated on “Let’s tell a good story” and the official digital partner Loops Integrated on
“Getting Your Customers’ Attention”. They were aimed at further helping the marketers to
craft their brand story better and to know what digital parameters to monitor and present to
win the coveted awards on offer.
The five main award categories include Product Brand of the Year, Service Brand of the Year,
Glocal Brand of the Year, Local Brand of the Year and Export Brand of the Year. The ten
Press Release
special awards added to this year’s awards night include Innovative Brand of the Year,
Turnaround Brand of the Year, Best New Entrant of the Year, B2B Brand of the Year, CSR
Brand of the Year, Online Brand of the Year, SME Local Brand of the Year, SME Export Brand
of the Year and the two new categories Agile Brand of the Year and Green Brand of the Year.
All entries are judged by a posy of the country’s most respected, experienced professionals.
They follow a careful and precise evaluation procedure to determine the brands, brand
custodians and entrepreneurs most worthy of recognition.
With the vision of propelling local brands into the international arena, the SLIM Brand
Excellence Awards process has been revamped this year with the introduction of a “Brand
Book”, which enables all applicants to fill in their brand details only once and then focus on
category-specific questions with much more vigour to justify why their brands should win.
The awards reflect a desire to develop and enable local brands to follow robust processes to
help them navigate today’s complex business environment.
Launched 21 years ago for the very first time, the Brand Excellence awards is the first award
ceremony dedicated to recognising and rewarding the best brands and brand custodians. Today
the awards program, which began with a mere 26 entries, boasts a record-breaking number of
applicants yearly. This is a testament to the growing popularity of the SLIM Brand Excellence
event as a prestigious awards campaign that serves as a development platform for brands, brand
managers and entrepreneurs.