By Sanjeevi Jayasuriya

Accredited Advertising Agencies Association (Four As) president Lilamani Dias Benson said on Tuesday that the worldwide recession is proving to be a vital learning experience for advertising and marketing professionals.

Speaking at a press conference organised by the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) in connection with the SLIM Awards 2002, which is scheduled to take place on March 9, she said that when times are good, you need to advertise to stand apart, and when times are bad, you need to advertise to gain an unbeatable advantage. The theme of this year’s SLIM awards is "Discover the good side of the bad times", emphasising the need for closer client/agency interaction.

"Advertising plays a vital part in keeping the market moving and we are one of the major players in creating a market to sell the goods and services that are on offer", said Taslim Rahman, vice president of SLIM. He said that the winners will be selected in line with "new trend in the field".

SLIM continues its collaboration with the Four As towards fashioning its thirteenth annual awards for the advertising and marketing communications industry, he said. An important feature of the awards this year will be the consolidation of a number of ‘marcom’ (marketing communications) awards together with the traditional advertising awards for various product categories, he added.

In media advertising, there are twelve product categories, ranging from food to finance with a new slot for the fast developing ‘retail advertising’ category. These will be judged with separate awards for print, radio and TV media, said G. S. Sylvester, chairman, SLIM Awards 2002.

He said that while a few marcom awards featured in previous years, this year, ten such award categories have been included. Transnational advertising too has been included as a stand-alone category to accommodate advertising adapted from concepts generated abroad by multi marketers.

There will be 145 awards, including four "grand" awards for the best TV, radio and prints ads and the campaign of the year, Sylvester said. "Despite the increase in awards, we are maintaining entry fees at the same level to encourage more agencies to come in’, he noted.

This year’s SLIM awards are being sponsored by Dulux, Coca-Cola, Swedish Trading, VFX Headquarters, Graphitec, Trans Asia Hotel, SriLankan Airlines, Sign Tech and SLECC.