Gamika new President of SLIM

The Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) is the national body that promotes marketing and elevates the status of marketing within Sri Lanka. SLIM has been engaged in achieving this vision since 1970, subsequently in 1980 SLIM was incorporated through an Act of Parliament.

SLIM’s mandate is to uplift the standards of marketers and marketing in Sri Lanka thereby adding value to the economy and the nation. Thus SLIM has aimed to get closer to this objective by pushing the boundaries and developing innovative events and programs that works toward this common goal.

As the New Year for SLIM marched in, it was time for a new leader to be chosen as well. Thus, Gamika De Silva was elected to take over the reins from Past President Tilan Wijesekara.

Gamika De Silva, a past pupil of Royal College, Colombo, first entered the field of marketing in 1998, after completing his preliminary marketing studies with the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), UK. Following, this he successfully completed an MBA degree from the University of Wales.

Speaking on his appointment as president of SLIM, De Silva said “I am deeply honoured and privileged to be the President of the national body for marketing in Sri Lanka. I have been contributing as sub-committee chair for ‘Peoples’ Awards’ and also as the ‘Brand Excellence’ chair for 2009. In addition, I served as the Honorary Secretary of the organisation in 2009 and 2010 and thereafter as Vice President for 2011 and 2012. In my profession, SLIM is the apex body, so I know that I have received a great honour and responsibility.”

With SLIM as the national marketing body having achieved many successes in the past, De Silva also outlined his vision for SLIM this year: “First and foremost, hats off to all the past presidents of SLIM who have successfully created a strong reputation for the Institute. Thanks to them, we have been able to consistently develop the vision of SLIM. The great thing is that all the past presidents have successfully picked up from where their predecessors have left and thus were able to ensure that we moved forward as an institute. As a result we have won many awards. My objective is to consolidate and reinvent to ensure that we achieve greater and more sustainable results. My intention is to add value to all the stakeholders and spheres, that is the members, the students, the government and general public, the marketing and fraternity and also the staff of SLIM. The theme for this year is ‘from good to great’. I was inspired by Jim Collins and hence chose this as my theme for the year.”

Stressing on the importance of developing the education sector, he said: “The SLIM business school is the very core of SLIM, thus in order to give our students improved facilities and also to provide better facilities for our lecture panel – we will be moving to a new, modern premises. Second, we are looking at further expanding the Kandy branch, as the Kandy branch is now at its peak in terms of programs and students. Another key area is the improvement of the quality of education. Previously we had a very limited range of educational options, but over the past few years we have introduced a variety of niche programs. In the future, students will have access to a wide variety of resources to support the educational activities.”

De Silva added: “Education is my main focus; we have two arms one focussing on education and the other on events. I am comfortable with the events side as I have handled it before and we have to maintain the high standards that we have achieved. Thus, I feel that now it is time to review the education sector at SLIM.”

In addition, De Silva also hopes to take the SLIM ‘Brand Excellence’ across continents while at the same time adding value to the local marketing industry. “Last year we had foreign applicants for our awards programme, so this year too we hope to get in more foreign applications for the Brand Excellence awards. We also want to formulate a sustainable code of conduct for advertising, this is something that has been developed in the past but has not been implemented in full, so we will be working bringing in ethical principles of advertising while not restricting the creativity of the industry. We currently work closely with several Government bodies in the implementation of marketing strategies and we are looking at further developing this relationship in order to contribute towards the efforts of national development.”

Speaking on the challenges, De Silva said: “Many students do not think of marketing as their top career choice. The number of students selecting marketing as a career has certainly increased, but there is room for improvement. We recently concluded our school based program ‘Marketing Roks’ and I was amazed by the talent and innovative thoughts that students came up with when presenting their marketing proposals on case studies presented to them. So the talent is immense. In addition, many people confuse marketing with sales, there are so many options when it comes to marketing – yes, sales is one part of it but there is access to areas such as brands, events, research, PR and media as well.  So yes, we will be looking at educating the young generation on their marketing career prospects.” With social media having become a big part of marketing, he also outlined SLIM plans on improving access and understanding of marketing via social media in Sri Lanka. “We already had a smaller event on social media marketing. We will be having another social media event coming up soon. Social media is particularly beneficial and is a growing medium; further it can measure the accuracy of targeting the audience. Right now it is a very small niche population that is utilising this concept, so yes, we hope to increase knowledge on this aspect of marketing as well. At the moment, we are just scratching the surface of social media but the opportunities are immense, and the marketers need to be aware of the proper management of this tool.”