Keells wins Gold and Silver at Asian Customer Engagement Awards

Friday, 13 June 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Keells received top recognition at the recently held 2nd Asian Customer Engagement Awards 2014 when their ‘Keells Karal Hathare Pack Eka’, i.e. Keells 4 sticks campaign pack won the Gold and Silver Awards at the award presentation which was held at ITC Grand Hotel, Mumbai, India. The award winning campaign was in the forefront, outshining a total of 172 entries, received from different multinational companies and brands across Asia.

The Customer Engagement Forum, founded in 2012, is one of Asia’s largest communities of customer engagement and advocacy professionals, including the most innovative practitioners around. The forum is the most prestigious conference on customer engagement, and has introduced awards for the finest customer engagement programs planned, implemented and executed. John Keells Holdings PLC President Consumer Foods Sector Jit Gunaratne said that this is a remarkable achievement of the company. “By receiving this award overcoming a large number of renowned brands in Asia, it has been once again proved that Keells is a truly customer focused brand which meets brilliance in every way. We are truly honoured to receive an award of this nature,” added Gunaratne. With the rapid growth of the number of competitors in the market and the demand or ‘loose’ sausages, consumer began to buy few for a low cost. Worse, these sausages came from small time retailers cutting open bulk packs to sell in smaller quantities. Some small time retailers tend to cut open bulk packs to sell in smaller quantities causing some serious health issues as open sausages were very susceptible to spoilage. Being a responsible market leader, Keells came up with this award winning concept to introduce the four-stick branded Keells pack, ‘Keells Karal Hathare Pack Eka’ so that the consumers could buy four sausages, packed according to world class specifications for a low cost, without having to worry about the health issues or the wallet. The concept was introduced to the Lankan market in a highly effective way through the award winning campaign, Keells talked to the consumers’ hearts directly through creative communication techniques, thus highly appealing to the core audience and getting the message out perfectly. Grant McCann Erickson (Creative Agency of the Campaign) Vice President Laila Gunesekere said that their task was to bring new users to the sausage category through the small and very affordable Keells pack as the new users were coming in to the category through the non-hygienic loose sausages. Giving due prominence to highlight the functional differentiation of Keells Sausages in a memorable way was required. “We also needed consumers to be aware of hygiene and quality and yet not make the ‘mudalali’ look a villain as he was the one who was integral to the promotion of the sale of loose sausages. With all this in mind, the biggest challenge was to make sausages more relevant to the mass consumer. We used a movie analogy to address this purpose and succeeded. I would say this is a moment where GrantMaccan reached the pinnacle of Creativity in Mass communication. We are very proud of our achievement and the truly special relationship we have with Keells that makes all things possible,” she added. Keells, presently Sri Lanka’s market leader in the processed meat industry with SLS certification, has won the hearts of the consumers through their wide range of products and has been in the forefront of the industry through strategic investments in state of the art food processing technology, quality control systems and an aggressive companywide R&D orientation.