Janashakthi wins three top regional awards

Tuesday, 19 August 2014 03:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Company wins kudos for marketing excellence, branding and sustainability Janashakthi Insurance garnered yet another clutch of awards for marketing excellence, picking up three trophies at the prestigious Global Awards for Brand Excellence and the fifth CMO Asia Awards held back to back at the Pan Pacific Hotel Singapore recently. The Global Awards for Brand Excellence, facilitated by the World Brand Congress, is touted as the single largest rendezvous of the best brains behind some of the world’s most sought after brands. The most outstanding amongst these was the Global Brand Sustainability Award conferred to Janashakthi for long term strategic brand building. The CMO Council promotes knowledge exchange at the highest level, while celebrating leadership among corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide variety of industries.

“We won this alongside stellar organisations like the BRAC Bank of Bangaladesh and that in itself was a privilege. BRAC is now the worlds largest development focused organisation in the world. They have done some amazing work. So it is humbling to think we are considered on par in some measure,” General Manager, Sales and Marketing Shehara de Silva commented. Janashakthi won two additional awards for Brand Excellence in the banking, financial services and insurance sector. The first was at the fifth CMO Asia Awards, which was won jointly with Commercial Credit. Janashakthi was the only Sri Lankan insurance company that won an award in this sector. The other award was from the Global Brand Excellence Awards for the banking insurance and finance industry category, alongside

awardees like HNB, Emirates, NDB, The Life Insurance Corp of India and BKASH limited. Award-winners were chosen based on the superiority of their brand equity building and positioning, strategic market position, value addition at customer point of demand, innovative implementation strategy in terms of advertising campaigns, vision for CSR, sustainability policy, and overall brand performance. Part of the mission of the Global awards is knowledge sharing – the Awards are deliberately wedged between the World Brand Congress. This year’s summit theme was ‘Brands that last: the role of sustainability in innovative branding’. An impressive line up of speakers included the CEO of Omincom media group Andreas Vogiatzakis who gave inspiring overview of ‘The workplaces of tomorrow – the future of work is play’. “We have carried out a number of projects to benefit the community, from sponsoring young rural athletes to a gamut of sports building activities in cricket, rugger and squash,” Manager – Brand Activation Kalum Weerasinghe said. “We have conducted free kidney screenings for chronic kidney disease, held fundraising events for those afflicted with cerebral palsy and used music to bridge ethnic divides amongst children in the North and East, worked towards Gender empowerment in the women’s chambers, helped the SME sector with the Entrepreneur awards, and most recently spent a lot of time and energy on water security and having a legacy programme in environmental conservation.” The Mahaoya water project conducted with the Lanka Water Partnership, consisting of Lanka Jalani and the Colombo University, is a benchmark program in public-private partnership, and has a potential impact of over two million lives. Janashakthi will be presenting their quality findings shortly, along with all the other schools awareness programs, river bank conservation, rainwater harvesting and other initiatives done to ensure community engagement and to exemplify the spirit of corporate volunteerism for

national programmes that impact on sustainability. Janashakthi has a template in place to maintain their brand at a strategic level. They have commissioned leading multinational market research company Nielsen’s to formally track their brand equity. The company also has a set of customer satisfaction Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that are used in management performance reviews. The Customer Relationship Management department maintains biannual tracking, nand management teams meet to address service shortfalls in a continuous improvement process aimed at raising KPIs annually. The brand activation team supports brand managers in a spectrum of brand and community engagement initiatives. All of this is tied back to Janashakthi’s brand essence of Fairness, with their overall mission aspiring to be ‘The most ethical insurer, delivering affordable, world class asset protection’. “It’s all about value creation; creating long-term relationships by being responsive and relevant and by consistently delivering value; recognising the power of energised human capital. Attracting, developing and retaining the best talent for our business, challenging our people to be exceptional. To be change makers in value delivery,” de Silva added.