Ceylon Tea global marketing campaign set for October

By Shabiya Ali Ahlam

Although the Sri Lanka Tea Board (SLTB) is yet to select a promotion partner, it revealed that the global campaign for Ceylon Tea will certainly kickoff by October this year.

The global campaign for Ceylon Tea was to take off on 2012, but was delayed since SLTB was unable to select a suitable partner for the promotion.

While expressions of interest were called in 2012 from reputed and experienced advertising agencies to implement the campaign with an estimated budget of Rs. 5 billion, among the 10 candidates which applied, four companies were shortlisted by the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC).

With the selected agencies failing to satisfy the TEC with their presentations, SLTB Director Promotions Hasitha De Alwis told the Daily FT that the same shortlisted agencies were given the opportunity to resubmit their proposals.

“We did not want to go with a new expression of interest for the campaign. Instead the SLTB thought it would be best to allow the selected four agencies to come out with a new concept,” he said.

According to Alwis, the second set of presentations has already been made to the TEC and its recommendations have been sent to the Cabinet Appointed Negotiating Committee (CANC) for approval.



“We are glad we went for a second attempt with the advertising agencies since the marks for each has changed greatly when compared with the previous presentations made by them,” he noted.

Alwis stressed that the SLTB was doing its best to obtain the necessary approvals from the CANC so the campaign could be launched this year without further delay.

When questioned about the perceived loss in delaying the launch of the global campaign for Ceylon Tea, Alwis opined that while there certainly had been no loss in terms of money, the decision to postpone the promotion had resulted in the loss of opportunity for the Ceylon Tea brand in international markets.