PANOPLY OF BRANDS
Why brands
and branding should take
centre-stage… even during a downturn.
t’s
been nearly 15 years since we launched Sri Lanka’s
pioneering business magazine LMD, which continues to be
our flagship. Our tiny island-nation now has over 50
magazines of which five come from the Media Services
stables… and this is the fifth. The launch
edition covers our world of brands and has been compiled
with more than a little help from our friends at Brand
Finance Lanka, whose rankings of both public and private
brands is the centrepiece of the inaugural publication
of BRANDS ANNUAL.
The
pages that follow contain just about everything anyone would
want to know about Sri Lanka’s top 200 brands, with some of
them accepting our invitation to be profiled in this special
issue.
This standalone edition comes at a time when businesses are
cutting back on all but what they consider to be essential.
The question then is whether brands should continue to be
invested in, as they have been in better times?
In
a wide-ranging and exclusive interview with LMD, for its
April 2009 issue, Singer Chairman Hemaka Amarasuriya says
that “downturns don’t last as long as they used to.
Depressions like that of the 1930s don’t occur any more. I
reckon there will always be an upturn after the downturn –
and downturn cycles are getting shorter from a historical
perspective. Consequently, to forget about branding and not
give it top priority would be a mistake.” Singer,
incidentally, is the top-rated brand this year.
Consider also that Brand Finance’s valuation of the 100
leading listed brands in this country alone amounts to a
staggering 211 billion rupees – which, in cumulative terms,
is an asset (albeit off balance sheet) worth investing in.
The other debate that’s raged for some years is the question
of stating brand values in financial reports. If the 100
leading public brands are anything to go by, the answer is
clearly in the affirmative – their combined value is
something like a third of the aggregate worth of the
enterprises they represent.
And
it isn’t just the private sector that is armed with highly
valuable brands to showcase. The two state-banking giants –
Bank Of Ceylon and People’s Bank – take the honours in this
year’s rankings of listed brands, with a combined value of
some 20 billion rupees.
We do hope that this special edition, and its myriad
analyses and rankings, are both informative and useful.
– media services/LMD
