Bank of Ceylon was the only bank to reach the finals of this year’s SLIM Brand Excellence Awards and win a Bronze.

All three entries submitted under the categories Service Brand of the Year, Turnaround Brand of the Year, and Local Brand of the Year reached the finals, and Bank of Ceylon won the Bronze award for the Turnaround Brand of the Year for its innovative and award-winning ‘Ran Surekum’ pawning campaign. Radio advertisements used in this ‘Ran Surekum’ pawning campaign has already won two nominations and a Bronze at the 2007 Chillies Advertising Awards earlier this year – again the only award winner in the Banking & Financial Services category for radio advertising.

Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) organises Brand Excellence Awards every year to reward outstanding efforts of the best-performing brands in the country. A SLIM Brand Excellence Award is regarded as the ultimate reward for high-performing brands and their marketers in Sri Lanka. There are eight different SLIM ‘Brand of the Year’ award categories for Product brands, Service brands, Innovative brands, Turnaround brands, Local brands, International brands, etc. A distinguished panel of judges, under the guidance of renowned Marketing Guru Dr. Uditha Liyanage, judged each entry’s claim to brand excellence using stringent evaluation criteria.

The highest-scoring three brands in each category received Gold, Silver & Bronze awards.

Commenting on Bank of Ceylon’s outstanding performance at the SLIM Brand Excellence Awards as a first-time entrant, the Project Chairman, Mr. Dinesh Nanayakkara, said, “Bank of Ceylon made excellent and convincing presentations for their three entries and defended their claim for brand excellence in each category very successfully. As a result, all three entries obtained high scores from the panel of judges and reached the finals. Out of these, Bank of Ceylon won the Bronze award for the Turnaround Brand of the Year for their ‘Ran Surekum’ pawning brand. I am very happy to see the dynamism and marketing savvy of a state bank competing and winning against all other commercial banks and some of Sri Lanka’s biggest and most successful brands.”

The SLIM Turnaround Brand of the Year award goes to the brand that has most successfully overcome a downturn, through outstanding brand management. Bank of Ceylon’s Corporate Communication Officer, Dr. Ashoka Jinadasa, was the architect behind the re-launch of the ‘Ran Surekum’ pawning brand. Explaining the thinking behind this award-winning turnaround brand, he said, “Bank of Ceylon’s pawning loan portfolio was relatively small when compared with that of our main competitors. In mid 2006, we decided to increase our share of the pawning market. We carefully profiled our primary target group, women, and came up with an innovative strategy to reposition our pawning brand within a broader scope of financial empowerment of women.

They could borrow money against their gold jewellery without requiring permission from anybody. We explained and that this was the cheapest, fastest and most flexible option available when compared with temporary overdrafts, credit card cash advances, personal loans, etc. A key secondary objective was to promote financial literacy and financial inclusion among the lower income groups and wean them away from unscrupulous moneylenders.

To match the vulnerable emotional profile of a woman in financial need, we developed non-intrusive and non-selling radio & TV commercials, in which women share their experiences of meeting unforeseen financial needs in different real-life situations. Usually, marketing awards and advertising awards don’t go together.

Therefore, I am very happy about winning a SLIM Brand Excellence Award for our ‘Ran Surekum’ pawning campaign, which has already won two Chillies Advertising Award nominations and the only Bronze for radio advertising in the Banking & Financial Services category, earlier this year.”