Two new, innovative initiatives by SLIM for ‘People’s Awards’ 2015
View(s):The Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) and its 2015 Project Committee is gearing for the hallmark award show – ‘SLIM-Nielsen Peoples Awards’, which recognises brands and personalities that SLIM says “have made a profound impression in the minds of the people of Sri Lanka”.
For the 9th year, the SLIM-Nielsen Peoples Awards will be held in March 2015, the organisers said this week. “This is one of the most awaited marketing events in the corporate calendar as the nominees and awardees are chosen by the voice of the people, through a comprehensive nationwide research conducted by Nielsen Sri Lanka – one of the largest information & research companies in the world that provides market research expertise. The SLIM-Nielsen Peoples Awards stands out and is distinct as the public acts as the panel of judges and are able to rate their favorite brands, personalities, advertisements, films, tele-dramas, etc and apprehend their verdict,” SLIM said in a media release.
The 2015 ‘SLIM-Nielsen Peoples Awards’ will be held on a grander scale with the introduction of two new initiatives; an exclusive SLIM-Nielsen Peoples Survey workshop for the corporate community and the introduction of a new category for this year’s Peoples Awards targeting online community; ‘netizens’.
Selecting the winners will be based on a nationwide quantitative face to face survey covering males and females between the ages of 15 to 60, over a period of five months using a structured questionnaire. The survey will cover all districts in the country including the North and East and will be conducted by trained interviewers from Nielsen, who will visit these districts using a random household selection process to select households in each street to be interviewed. Respondents will be asked to mention their favourite brands and personalities across various categories, with those receiving the highest nominations being declared as the winners.
Commenting on the new initiatives SLIM President Kalana Rathnayake, said, “This is a medium which provides us with an opportunity to give recognition to brands and personalities that are best appreciated by the Sri Lankan people. It gives us great pleasure to be able to conduct one of the largest independent surveys in the country and we are happy to present a platform where marketers can hear the voice of the public, because at the end of the day, brands and organizations can only grow by appealing to its consumers.”
He added that, researching before planning a new business initiative is extremely important in today’s world market. “Hence, successful brand market research has the power to make a business thrive and is a key step into making a worthy product/service. We are empowering our marketers further by conducting an online survey for the first time in the Peoples awards history by giving a glimpse of the netizen’s life in Sri Lanka”
Thilanka Abeywardena, Category Manager – Brand Marketing at Etisalat Lanka has been appointed as the Project Chairperson for the year 2015. She added, “We have made a commitment to make the 2015 SLIM-Nielsen Peoples Awards uniquely different and future proof; by focusing beyond the award ceremony, but everything in between leading up to the ceremony”.
She said two new initiatives have been introduced in response to the new challenges in the market place due to the dynamic nature of the consumer and the context. These two are the online survey targeting the growing online population ‘netizens’ and the ‘SLIM Power of Research workshop’ to assist the business planning process of the corporates.
“There are over 2 million FaceBook users in Sri Lanka which is about 11.5 per cent of the population. This online survey will run parallel to the face to face survey to reveal which brand and personality is best liked by ‘netizens’ in four new categories; People’s Media institute online, Peoples brand online, Peoples Celebrity online and Peoples website of the year. We have introduced the new initiative; Peoples’ online survey which is a need of time. This initiative will make this programme future-proof and will also set a new bar for all the People’s awards to come,” she said in the media release.