Sri Lanka’s marketing fraternity is stepping up efforts to correct island nation’s image in the eyes of the international community, given the negative sentiments that are still largely prevalent. The national body of marketers, the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM) has kicked off a fresh initiative that will focus on rebranding the country he institution unveiled the inaugural ‘Brand Sri Lanka Creation Symposium’ by bringing together the experts in branding, business leaders and policy influencers, to roll out the endeavor the relatively. Accordingly, efforts are underway to explore and pool in innovative ideas and strategies that can help crisis-struck Sri Lanka to stand out, as it looks to start a new chapter in its economic development and growth agenda. As several attempts by diverse stakeholders in appropriately branding the island nation have failed in the recent past, SLIM expressed confidence in having what it takes to fix Sri Lanka’s image in a global context. “Over the last many months, SLIM has been trying to create awareness about the need for such a nation branding strategy. It was also important to understand where we actually stood in the eyes of the world and for that we had to immerse ourselves in a worldwide research,” said SLIM President Nuwan Gamage. He added that in the next few decades, the national marketing body hopes to leverage the resources available to co-craft and assist those in power to lead a policy-led strategy that is also anchored on sustainability and solving issues that are not just relevant to Sri Lanka but the rest of the world. This should ideally enable the world to see Sri Lanka through a new paradigm,” said Gamage. According to Nation Branding Project Chairperson Kavi Rajapaksha, the initiative aims to curate and adapt the right nation branding strategy, which would organically reinstate respect and consideration for our mother Lanka and its creations Due to the boom in social media, the struggle of the people was very much noticed by the international community, which has led to the perception that the country is witnessing amplified poverty. Poorly constructed comments by politicians in international fora have added to the problem, making it only difficult for the island nation to emerge from its image that has taken a massive hit.