Following a successful inaugural course in Corporate Communications and Public Relations concluded at the end of last year, the Accredited Advertising Agencies Association (4A’s) in partnership with the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI) recently graduated their second intake of students. The course was repeated as it had generated much goodwill, regard and demand from employers, practitioners and students. With the participation of four highly experienced industry CEOs, the course focused on professional hands-on learning with many industry case studies, underpinned by theoretical concepts and methodologies shared with the students and was conducted in an interactive environment.

Students attending the last course benefitted from the insight of top experts in these fields, who were the lecturers this time around as well. The lecture panel included Founder Chairman of Bates Strategic Alliance – Nimal Gunewardena, CEO of OMD and PHD – Keith Wijesuriya and Managing Director of Words Advertising – Rohan Rajaratnam. Course Director Adrian Ferdinands did additional sessions on Personal Branding to help students in their professional careers.

Increasingly, Sri Lanka’s companies, large and small, and its Boards, CEOs and Marketing and Communications Heads have come to appreciate the value of managing corporate reputation and the evolving role of social media in this regard. Marketers are seeing the value of using PR as a complementary marketing weapon to the traditional reliance primarily on advertising. Course modules include PR Strategy Development, Media Relations & Release writing, Crisis & Issues Management, Social Media, Corporate Branding & Positioning, Audiences and Content, Internal Communications, CSR and Personal Branding.

“The 4A’s is dedicated to fostering creative talent through collaboration. It is with this in mind that we continued our partnership with the Sri Lanka Press Institute to offer this course for a second time, and it with its growing popularity we are considering a third intake,” said President of the 4A’s and COO of Bates Strategic Alliance, Sheron Jayasundara. “This is an exciting field with a lot of scope for growth and expression of creativity.” she added.

“Being a premier institution in the field of communication, SLPI has been working towards professionalizing journalism for more than a decade. We feel this proven partnership with 4A’s and the successful completion of the second batch of students, ensures that it is a program that is in demand and has added another dimension to our role in bringing communications and media programmes of this nature, which is not only sought out by the corporates but also by individuals” said the CEO of SLPI, Kumar Lopez.