Is Sri Lanka ready for fusion marketing?

Sri Lankans will have the rare opportunity of witnessing one of the world’s foremost multi-faceted personalities live in Colombo, when Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) hosts leading business author, inventor, strategist and futurist, Lon Safko for a workshop on 27 May.

The workshop will be based on Lon’s newest invention, ‘Fusion Marketing and The Safko Wheel Marketing Toolkit’, which has been accepted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. This workshop is the latest in a series of world class training programs organised by SLIM for the development of the corporate sector.

Amazon’s No. 1 bestselling book, Lon’s ‘The Social Media Bible’, which is the first and only book to tackle the whole gamut of social media marketing, is now in its third edition and has been translated into five languages. ‘The Fusion Marketing Bible’, Lon’s newest bestseller, has already been translated into three languages. This book explains how to pinpoint the most effective elements of traditional marketing efforts and combine them with social media and digital marketing to reach more customers, while spending less money.

Lon was the creator of the ‘First Computer To Save A Human Life’, as coined by the late Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. He worked with the co-founders of Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, from the early days of the company and during its transitional period under John Scully. He worked as a value added reseller with Apple and developed the fully graphic operating system, which was the archetype for the first ever PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), the Apple Newton. He has programmed over 1 million lines of code and introduced many pioneering software and hardware solutions to the world including voice recognition, voice synthesising, and home automation.

Lon has founded over 14 companies, including Paper Models Inc., based on Lon’s Three-Dimensional Internet Advertising and Virtual-Electronic-Retailing (V-E-Tailing) for business, promotions, and education. A total of 18 of Lon’s inventions are part of the permanent collection of the prestigious Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. along with 30,000 of his personal papers. He has 14 inventions in the collection of The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

Prior to this, SLIM has conducted workshops featuring other world renowned foreign and local marketing personalities such as the legendary ‘Marketing Guru’ Philip Kotler, leading marketing consultant for Fortune 100 brands Keith Chambers, author of the international bestseller ‘Global Marketing 6th Edition’ Prof. Svend Hollensen, Digital Marketing expert Mike Berry and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) trainer Nick Le Force. Fulfilling its mandate of developing marketing in Sri Lanka, SLIM also offers over 20 development programs in areas such as sales, marketing and management along with reputed and industry experienced trainers and innovative training methodologies.

Stating about the event, SLIM President Upul Adikari added; “We consider it our responsibility to facilitate constant collaboration with top-notch global marketing professionals, in this digital era who enhance and encourage local marketing professionals to think global and gain valuable insights which would add value to their enterprise as well as themselves, by changing according to time. We have learnt, heard and studied about the intellect that Lon Safko offered, and this is the best opportunity for you to meet the expert in person and enrich yourselves.”

This workshop will take place on 27 May from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Water’s Edge Battaramulla, and tickets are priced at Rs. 15,000. The sponsors for the event include Wijeya Newspapers as the Print Media Partner, TNL Radio as the Electronic Media Partner – Radio, Derana as the Electronic Media Partner – TV, Emerging Media as the Digital Outdoor Media Partner, Total PR as the PR partner, Ants Work as the Event Partner, and NDB, Dell, Blue Mountain and Sri Lanka Telecom.

SLIM is the national body for marketing and offers the most sought after proprietary postgraduate and diploma programmes in the fields of marketing and sales. The SLIM calendar includes premier annual events such as SLIM Brand Excellence, Effie Awards, People’s Choice Awards and NASCO. SLIM is a member of the National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka (NCCSL), Organisation of Professional Associations of Sri Lanka (OPA) and Federation of Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Sri Lanka (FCCISL). 

Internationally it is affiliated with ESOMAR, the Federation of Marketing Research Industries and is a member of the Asia Marketing Federation, which is affiliated to the World Marketing Association.