CIM confers an Honorary Fellowship on Vijith Kannangara of Q&E

The Chartered Institute of Marketing conferred an Honorary Fellowship on Dr Vijith Kannangara at a gala Black-tie dinner with the Institute’s Fellows and Chartered Marketers.

Dr Kannangara is founder and Chairman of Q&E Advertising, Smart Media and Affno. Paul Gostick, Chairman, International Board of Trustees of CIM UK was the chief guest and Dr Hans Wijesuriya, CEO of Dialog Telecom was the guest of honour. Past Chairmen of CIM Sri Lanka Region and senior marketers were among the distinguished gathering. Lasantha Wickremesooriya, past Chairman CIM Sri Lanka region and Member of CIM International Board of Trustees, in the citation said Dr Kannangara since 1991 has built a successful marcom business in Sri Lanka, and arguably the most valuable local brands, in their respective categories.

The Q&E chief expanded his pioneering efforts to create the category of independent advertising agencies in Sri Lanka and subsequently established the interactive agency category at world class standards.

“Dr Kannangara is a thought leader. Through his portfolio of enterprises, he was responsible for introducing many firsts to marketing in Sri Lanka.

These include: creating awareness amongst Sri Lanka’s corporate community, about the whole subject of brands and branding in the late 90’s; providing a world class interactive agency solution to Sri Lankan organizations at a time when such services were highly sought after and difficult to obtain even in the most developed markets; Innovations in presenting Annual Reports from knowledge Management reporting, to triple bottom line reporting, human resource accounting and corporate governance ratings that have enabled Sri Lankan reports to be leaders by far in the entire South Asian Region,” he said.