People's Awards: SLIM introduces new category

The Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) and the project committee is preparing for its award show, 'SLIM-Nielsen Peoples Awards', which recognises brands and personalities that have made a profound impression in the minds of the people of Sri Lanka.

The SLIM-Nielsen Peoples Awards will be held for the ninth time in March 2015.

The nominees and awardees are chosen through comprehensive nationwide research conducted by Nielsen Sri Lanka, a research company that provides market research expertise.

The SLIM-Nielsen Peoples Awards is unique, as the public act as the panel of judges and rate their favourite brands, personalities, advertisements, films and tele-dramas.

The 2015 'SLIM-Nielsen Peoples Awards' will be held on a grand 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 targeting the 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, using a structured questionnaire, over five months.

The survey will cover all districts in the country including the North and the 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.

The respondents will be asked their favourite brands and personalities across various categories, with those receiving the highest nominations being declared winners.

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 people."

"We conduct one of the largest independent surveys in the country and are happy to present a platform where marketeers can hear the voice of the public, because at the end of the day, brands and organisations can only grow by appealing to its consumers," he said. Researching before planning a new business initiative is important in today's world market, Rathnayake said.

"Successful brand market research has the power to make a business thrive. We are empowering our marketeers further by conducting an online survey for the first time in the People's Awards history by giving a glimpse of the netizens' life in Sri Lanka," he said.