People crown Singer at SLIM, Nielsen awards Marketers need to pay attention to Lanka’s poor with incomes set to rise, says govt minister

By Hiran H.Senewiratne

The Minister of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare Dilan Perera says 40 percent of Sri Lanka’s population lived below the poverty line and marketing professionals should begin to pay attention to them, as this segment is expected to be a lucrative market in time to come.

"Therefore, proper marketing strategies should be adopted now in order to attract that income category segment, because with the booming economy, their disposable incomes will no-doubt increase. Unfortunately, marketing professionals are not interested in this segment right now," Perera said at the SLIM-Nielsen People’s Award 2011, as its chief guest.

The SLIM-Nielsen People’s Awards is an initiative of the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) and the Nielsen Company Lanka (Pvt) Ltd. This year, the SLIM-Nielsen People’s Brand of the Year was awarded to Singer Sri Lanka.

Perera said marketing was a broad but noble concept and brand development was just a part of it. "Therefore, it would help to build excellent global brands for the country to penetrate into international markets without any difficulty."

He said that the Sri Lankan model of defeating terrorism two years ago was an excellent case study which was being studied by many international institutions around the world. Further, Sri Lanka’s family planning marketing model also received much global attention, he said

Nielsen Sri Lanka Managing Director Shaheen Cader said the Sri Lankan consumer psyche was rather paradoxical. "While outwardly we appear to project a more cosmopolitan image, inward we tend to be more traditional."

He said the winners and nominees across the award categories have been chosen according to opinions put forth by a robust sample of 2,700 people aged 15 to 60 years in an unbiased and scientific survey to reflect the true choice of the people in the country.

For the first time in the history of the awards, consumers’ from the North and East were interviewed making the winners reflective of the opinions of people from all regions and communities, Cader said.