Elevating a Local Brand to Regional Recognition: Supporting Award-Winning Category Innovation

Project Scope

Celeste, Sri Lanka’s fastest-growing on-demand digital supermarket, has become a household name for reliability, convenience, and innovation in digital retail. However, behind the brand’s growing visibility and recognition lies a carefully structured marketing and communications strategy, one that positioned Celeste not just as a business success, but as a national symbol of marketing excellence.

Cyaniq, serving as Celeste’s go-to-market consultants, was instrumental in designing and executing this strategy. The project involved three key mandates:

1. Structuring Celeste’s Marketing Function:
   Cyaniq was tasked with streamlining Celeste’s marketing function to better align resources, messaging, and strategy toward measurable brand outcomes. This involved evaluating the company’s internal marketing processes, identifying critical performance gaps, and instituting frameworks for brand visibility, storytelling, and award recognition.
2. Award Nomination and Application Management:
   Cyaniq prepared Celeste’s complete nomination and submissions for two of the most prestigious marketing award platforms in the region, the SLIM Brand Excellence Awards and the Asian Marketing Federation (AMF) Awards. The consultancy handled every stage of the process: developing strategic narratives, crafting submissions, coordinating data validation, and ensuring alignment with judging criteria across both national and regional levels.
3. Media Relations and Narrative Management:
   Following the awards, Cyaniq managed media outreach and press relations to guide the national conversation around Celeste’s wins, ensuring the achievements were amplified across traditional and digital channels with the right tone, credibility, and positioning.

This engagement represented a comprehensive 360° marketing and communication support framework from internal brand alignment to external brand elevation, culminating in Celeste becoming one of the most decorated digital retail brands in Sri Lanka’s modern history.

Challenges

The competitive landscape for marketing awards in Sri Lanka and the Asia Pacific region is both dense and demanding. Cyaniq faced several strategic and operational challenges in positioning Celeste for victory:

1. Intense National Competition;
   At the SLIM Brand Excellence Awards, Celeste competed against 75+ national contenders across industries, from established FMCG giants to fast-growing digital startups. Each category required an extraordinary demonstration of measurable brand impact, creativity, and market differentiation.
2. Elevated Regional Standards:
   Having secured its national wins, Celeste’s entry advanced to the Asian Marketing Federation Awards in China, where it faced 15+ regional competitors, including high-budget, multinational brands from across Asia. Competing at this level required international-standard submissions, proof points, and storytelling that could stand alongside global campaigns.
3. Strategic Messaging for Recognition:
   Crafting award submissions is a discipline that requires balancing authenticity with persuasion. The challenge was to communicate Celeste’s success story, from pandemic-era startup to digital retail leader, in a way that was both inspiring and analytically sound.
4. Maintaining Brand Consistency:
   As the company scaled, Cyaniq had to ensure that Celeste’s brand identity, communication tone, and visual consistency were preserved across every touchpoint, from award submissions to press releases, reinforcing a unified and credible brand presence.

These challenges demanded a deep understanding of marketing evaluation frameworks, data-driven storytelling, and the ability to translate operational success into globally resonant marketing narratives.

Solution

Cyaniq’s solution was grounded in strategy, structure, and storytelling, combining analytical rigor with creative persuasion to craft submissions and communications that stood out in competitive judging environments.

1. Structuring the Marketing Function for Recognition

Cyaniq began by strengthening Celeste’s marketing foundations, establishing processes that would align brand growth with measurable marketing outcomes. This included:

• Defining key brand KPIs and marketing success metrics.
• Streamlining internal marketing workflows and performance reporting.
• Ensuring storytelling consistency across leadership, marketing, and PR teams

This groundwork not only enhanced operational efficiency but also made Celeste’s marketing story more cohesive and quantifiable, a critical factor in competitive judging.

2. Award Strategy and Submission Development

For both SLIM Brand Excellence and AMF Awards, Cyaniq adopted a consultative, data-backed approach to narrative building. Each submission was developed as a strategic case presentation supported by qualitative storytelling and quantitative metrics.

The consultancy collaborated closely with Celeste’s leadership, including Founder and Managing Director Janik Jayasuriya, to identify the brand’s strongest proof points in innovation, youth-led strategy, and digital excellence.

The final submissions emphasized:

• Celeste’s pandemic-origin story, how necessity sparked innovation.
• Digital-first operations and partnerships with platforms like UberEats and PickMe.
• Youth-driven marketing strategy, highlighting leadership under 35.
• Impact metrics, including brand growth, retention rates, and market share expansion.

By crafting a narrative that celebrated both entrepreneurship and execution, Cyaniq positioned Celeste not merely as a digital retail brand, but as a marketing movement redefining consumer convenience in Sri Lanka.

3. Media and Reputation Managemen

Post-victory, Cyaniq took the lead in managing the national media narrative surrounding Celeste’s dual wins.

The consultancy developed and distributed official press materials, coordinated media interviews, and engaged with influential business publications and online platforms to ensure broad visibility.

The official press release, “Celeste Represents Sri Lanka at Asia Marketing Federation Awards 2025 Following Dual National Wins”, was crafted by Cyaniq and released nationally and regionally, ensuring consistent coverage across traditional and digital news platforms.

This effort not only maximized the visibility of Celeste’s success but also strengthened its credibility as a national champion representing Sri Lanka on an international stage.

Outcomes & Impact

Cyaniq’s strategic and communications support translated directly into measurable results for Celeste.

1. National Recognition:
   Celeste was awarded two category awards at the SLIM Brand Excellence Awards, Youth Marketer of the Year and Netizen Digital Marketer of the Year.
2. Regional Representation:
   As a result of its dual wins, Celeste was selected as Sri Lanka’s official national representative at the Asian Marketing Federation (AMF) Awards 2025 in China, a distinction reserved for the country’s top marketing performers.
3. Strengthened Brand Authority:
   The awards and ensuing media attention solidified Celeste’s positioning as Sri Lanka’s leading 24/7 on-demand digital supermarket, elevating its credibility with consumers, partners, and investors.
4. International Visibility:
   Participation in the AMF Awards placed Celeste alongside major Asian marketing success stories, introducing the brand to a wider regional audience and showcasing Sri Lankan innovation on the global stage.
5. Media Impact:
   Cyaniq’s post-award communications campaign generated nationwide coverage, including features in leading newspapers, online news outlets, and social media. The story became one of national pride, highlighting how Sri Lankan startups could compete regionally through strategic marketing excellence.
6. Long-Term Partnership:
   The success of the awards cycle deepened the collaboration between Celeste and Cyaniq, with Cyaniq continuing to play a strategic role in Celeste’s brand evolution, go-to-market initiatives, and ongoing media communications.

Through this engagement, Cyaniq demonstrated its ability to turn brand achievements into narratives of national and regional impact, bridging marketing consultancy with public relations, strategy, and communications execution.

Key Learnings

1. Strategy Transforms Recognition into Reputation:
   Awards are not outcomes of chance but of structured brand architecture. A clearly defined marketing function and data-driven storytelling can transform achievements into long-term reputation.
2. Narratives Must Be Built, Not Borrowed:
   Cyaniq’s success lay in building a compelling story unique to Celeste’s journey, one that reflected purpose, agility, and authenticity rather than generic marketing rhetoric.
3. Local Brands Can Compete Regionally:
   Celeste’s AMF participation underscores that Sri Lankan brands can hold their own in regional arenas when backed by strong strategy, creative clarity, and disciplined execution.
4. Integrated Communications Drive Longevity:
   Combining marketing strategy, award submissions, and media management under a unified framework ensures consistency, credibility, and amplified impact.
5. Partnership Fuels Progress:
   The synergy between Cyaniq and Celeste, rooted in trust, strategic clarity, and shared ambition, proved that meaningful collaboration between brand and consultant can elevate both parties to new levels of visibility and success.