Rs.4.8 bln tea campaign shortlists three agencies
The Sri Lanka Tea Board (SLTB) is currently finalising the Rs. 4.8 billion global campaign for tea promotion for which cabinet approval is awaited, having shortlisted three agencies.
SLTB Director Promotions Premila Srikantha told the Business Times on Tuesday that they have sent the details of the shortlisted agencies and recommendations to obtain cabinet approval.
The procurement process and the technical evaluation of the tender process were completed with recommendations made to the Cabinet on one of the three shortlisted agencies to be selected for the global promotion campaign.
Planning and scheduling of the campaign would commence following the awarding of the contract to the selected agency, she explained.
The SLTB has identified 12 markets to carry out their campaign as part of the first phase: Russia, China, US, Turkey, Japan, Australia, Germany, Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, UK and India.
The campaigns would be carried out with the participation of the embassies in the relevant markets as part of the advertising campaign for Ceylon Tea.
Original plans were to commence the campaign in December which was later shelved due to the holiday season setting in and the industry has requested it to be carried out in the second half of January 2018, Ms. Srikantha said.
A digital campaign would also be carried out at the same time although the actual spend for this is yet to be decided, she noted.
The selected agency would make their call on how to carry out the media planning and scheduling and select where to advertise whereas the media buying would be by the SLTB.
The SLTB also plans to expand this promotional drive into a number of other countries as part of another phase of the campaign like in Jordan, Iraq, Hong Kong, Latin America Chile and Canada and later the Netherlands, Poland France and Pakistan. Other high risk countries like Syria, Ukraine and Libya would also be considered for the campaign as part of initial plans.
This promotion campaign was a long overdue project that the industry had been awaiting for which funds had been accumulated over the years in the form of promotional levy.
Initially these funds were to have been taken over by the Treasury as part of its policy to bridge the budget deficit following a budget promise to take over funds lying in state departments. But this was not later carried out and it was retained for promotional spending as it had been allocated for this purpose by the industry itself.