SLIM Brand Excellence Awards briefing session reveals new award criteria for 2022 

From left: SLIM President Nuwan Gamage, Head of Jury Imal Fonseka, SLIM VP Event Gayan Perera and SLIM Project Chair Kavi Rajapaksha - Pic by Lasantha Kumara

Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing launched the 21st Edition of the SLIM Brand Excellence Awards 2022 on 22 August, 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 5 September 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, Global Brand of the Year, Local Brand of the Year and Export Brand of the Year.

The ten 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 for the very first time, 21 years ago, 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.