SLIM recognises best in Brand Excellence

By Cheranka Mendis

 Ritzbury was recognised as the ‘last one standing’ at the recently concluded SLIM Brand Excellence Awards, taking home the prestigious ‘Brand of the Year’ title amidst continuous cheering and celebration from the crowd.

Ritzbury also took home four more awards – three golds as Product Brand of the Year, Local Brand of the Year, and Best New Entrant of the Year for Ritzbury Tropicana and a bronze for Innovative Brand of the Year. Daily FT was the print partner for the awards along with Wijeya Group publications Sunday Times and Dialy Mirror.

Held at Sri Lanka Exhibition and Convention Centre, the 11th edition of the awards, which has progressed from being an event to a brand to reckon with, recognises brands that have proven their excellence through brand intent, brand content, brand process and brand performance. Judged by an able panel of judges headed by Richard Peiris Group Director Operations Ravi Leanage, awards were given under 14 categories including Brand of the Year.

Organised to not only encourage best practices in branding but also to raise the standards of local brands to the global scale enhancing the image of marketing in Sri Lanka, the latest edition included the ‘regional recognition’ of brands, bringing regional players to Sri Lanka to commend their work. This also shows the global scale at which SLIM Brand Excellence operates, 11 years since its inception.

Speaking at the award ceremony, SLIM President Thilan Wijesekara noted the importance of building a sustainable competitive advantage for organisations. With the global conditions showing extreme tough conditions as at now economically, the challenge of building competitive advantage is a testing task, he said.

“How do we build these competitive advantages? It has become a daunting task. It is not the way we used to develop a simple product or note a pricing strategy year or two ago. Things have changed. In today’s progressively sophisticated environment, with the advancement of technology and proliferation of knowledge at its peak, most factors including innovation, products, services, processes, systems, channels etc. which used to deliver a source of traditional competitive advantage are no longer at play,” Wijesekara stated.

However, business leaders and marketers have today understood that a brand in an organisation is an essential tool that can deliver sustainable competitive advantage.

Advisor to the judging panel and the brains behind the evaluation criteria, Prof. Uditha Liayange, stressing the importance of brands asserted that according to reports it is estimated that one third of global wealth is in the form of brands.“Many global corporate brands are bigger than the economies of nation states. That is the power of brands,” Liyanage said.

One of the objectives of SLIM Brand Excellence Awards is to put in place a robust scientific branding process, he explained. “The evolution criteria developed reflects the state of play. It captures the essence of cutting edge knowledge and branding as we know it today. So you will do well to follow in the process and manage your brands as you ought to.”

Sharing insights of the judging panel, Head of Panel of Judges Ravi Liyanage noted that 50% of the marks were given for brand content, intent and process while the remaining 50% was determined by performance. He stated that regrettably, some brands could not articulate between business excellence and brand excellence.

“We have seen brands achieving business excellence via capacity enhancement, corporate restructuring, financial restructuring, trim and lean management to productivity. Unfortunately some companies could not connect business excellence to brand excellence. There was disengagement.”

Competitive rivalry in the market as well as market structures was well looked at, he added. It was evident that greater the rivalry and the operating space of the brand, the greater the propensity to score more.

Liyanage expressed that presentation of cases were also taken into consideration as a decisive factor, while the authenticity of the information in particularly performance was strictly and closely validated. There was intense competition in the service brand category, he said.

“In general we observed some great initiatives from the home grown brands. In an era where costs of funds are 17-18% in this country, this is a positive move. Some brands also showed a degree of inelasticity in very tough economic situations,” Liyanage added. “We also saw some very promising new applications this time. 50% applications are from new entries.”

Singer Group of Companies Chairman Hemaka Amarasuriya attended the event as the Chief Guest and discussed brands both home and abroad, growth mechanisms and factors to consider in enterprise value, brand equity and international accounting standards among others.

SLIM Brand Excellence was recognised at the Annual Asian Business Leadership Awards 2012 in Dubai where it won its first international award a month ago, for the ‘most admired event for branding and marketing.’

Pix by Upul Abayasekara