True choice of the people makes BOC the ‘Peoples Service Brand of the Year’

BOC General Manager/CEO receiving the ‘Peoples Service Brand of the year’ award (middle), while the bank’s Chief Marketing Officer Dr. Indunil Liyanage, Deputy General Manager Sales and Channel Management C. Amarasinghe, Assistant General Manager Marketing Priyal Silva and the officials of the bank’s Marketing and Business Development 

department are also seen 

BOC thanks all Sri Lankans for the People’s choice – a true voice of the people who elevated Bank of Ceylon as the ‘Peoples Service Brand of the Year’ at the SLIM-Nielsen Peoples Awards 2018, the prestigious event that brings out the strength and the impression a brand has created within the people. Organised by the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing, the national body of marketers in Sri Lanka (SLIM) jointly with the Nielsen Company (Lanka) Ltd., the event is much looked forward to by many renowned brands and brand custodians in the country. 

This Awards ceremony is a platform that demonstrates the strength of a brand that comes forth as a true choice of the people among all renowned brands in the country. All award recipients are selected through an island-wide survey conducted by the Nielsen Company (Lanka) Ltd., which is one of the renowned multinational research companies in the world. This independent survey demonstrated the brand’s attachment with the people and the effectiveness of the brand’s communication towards them. 

Annually Nielsen conducts a large scale survey across all 25 districts of Sri Lanka covering citizens between the ages of 15 to 60 years, who will be interviewed and asked to recall their favourite brands for various categories. In order to conduct this extensive research Nielsen follows comprehensive methodology including a large sample group. Nielsen states that tabulated results on brands are made available to SLIM and that these winners selected are truly the ones who have made a lasting impression in the mind of Sri Lankan community. 

Apart from the “Peoples Service Brand of the year” award, “BOC” brand was nominated for several other significant awards and was one of the four to be nominated for the highest accolade to be awarded at the event – the “People’s Brand of the Year”. The award itself states how a brand has penetrated and established itself as a household brand in hearts and minds of the people escaping the clutter created by every other brand through media over a period of time.

“The achievement is evidence that our strategic thinking and investments made to project the brand “BOC” and to establish it amongst the people have been a fruitful one. I wish to take this opportunity to thank our marketing/brand team and the whole staff for the hard work and commitment to develop “BOC” brand as an accomplished brand through the true voice of the people. Furthermore I wish to thank all Sri Lankans including our valued customers for being with us and supporting our journey towards excellence to become the household brand for banking,” stated General Manager/Chief Executive Officer Senarath Bandara. 

The brand “BOC” has been named as the country’s No.1 brand for the last nine consecutive years by the Brand Finance Sri Lanka and this has been restated at InterBrand “Best Sri Lankan Brands” inauguration convention. InterBrand is the world’s largest and most influential global brand consulting agency. Considering the impact the “BOC” has over the Sri Lankan community the CMO Council Asia conferred the Master Brand Status for the year 2017-2018. The brand “BOC” has been named as one of the Asia’s Best Brands in 2013 by the Chief Marketing Officers Council (CMO Council) based in Mumbai. 

Since its inception, Bank of Ceylon’s motive has been the same – that is promoting social and economic development of the country and its people. As such the BOC brand has been strategically adapting its products and services portfolio with a good understanding of future social and economic trends that requires tailor-made banking and financial services. “BOC” has altered its strategy from time to time and adapted the digital transformation in the early part of 2012 and has successfully moved into workflow automation which will cover all important business processes shortly. 

“BOC”, being the largest and a state owned bank, this is an endorsement of its commitment towards government’s digitalisation program. With the success it has gained through the transformation BOC will soon be the first local Bank to automate all business processes and to provide customer convenience to apply for account opening, loans, and other service request from anywhere anytime.