The Road to Success

Q: What does winning a Brand Excellence Award signify to the winner?

A: The word ‘brand’ alone has many connotations. It distinguishes an organisation and builds trust with its consumers; but many fail to understand that there is a plethora of elements inculcated in a brand.

For example, its service, logo, customer experiences, or the product or service itself – there’s a lot of effort on the part of the brand’s custodians and the organisation; they work hard in taking their brand to the masses.

Apart from brand excellence, there’s currently no other platform to help recognise these brands and their efforts. That is where we come in.

We introduced the Brand Excellence Awards to recognise the best brands locally while showing the winners where their brand stands in the marketplace and how they have performed against their competitors. We also provide an opportunity to participate in a forum with the judges and panellists – this offers them an opportunity to ask questions, and for the panel to help organisations and brands to grow.

Our intention with the Brand Excellence Awards is to help the winners reach their full potential eventually, and provide the platform they need to take their brands to the international markets.

Q: And how does SLIM prepare marketers for the real world, in your assessment?

A: We understand the dynamism in the marketplace. It’s an ever changing world. As we speak, research is being conducted about future marketing trends, and as a result it’s always evolving so we need to keep a tab on things around us and the marketing sphere.

SLIM has three bodies – namely the Council of Education, Education Reforms Committee and Board of Study.

The Council of Education consists of our internal staff while the Education Reforms Committee comprises a blend of industry professionals as well as academics. They come together to evaluate our curricula and research the demands of the marketplace because we create marketing professionals who can adapt to these needs.

This research and the evaluations are then reviewed by the Board of Study, which consists of professors from the local universities and professionals.

Along with these bodies, SLIM provides several courses to help nurture well rounded marketers. The institute offers 12 indigenous qualifications and two affiliated qualifications. While we’re the national body for marketing studies, we don’t discriminate; therefore, we are also the longest running accredited centre for CIM and marketing studies from the UK.

SLIM also provides its students with ALM or Action Learning Marketing whereby CEOs and CMOs of renowned companies based in Sri Lanka are invited to speak to students – and the students can use extracts from their presentations and know how to build themselves.

At the end of the day, at SLIM we believe that marketing is an innate behaviour – and we simply bring out the marketer in you.

Q: And finally, what does the future have in store for SLIM?

A: Well, 2020 marks our 50th year in the education sector and we have many plans for the institute. With the world turning towards the digital age, we’re bringing digital based courses to our students as well as projects that are based on practicals where students can learn in real life scenarios – and learn the art of nurturing a brand.

We’re a member of the Asia Marketing Federation so our goal as a professional marketing body is to eventually elevate the marketing profession and take Sri Lankan marketers to the world.

Sanath Senanayake
CEO/Executive Director
SLIM