Thursday Nov 14, 2024
Thursday Nov 14, 2024
Wednesday, 4 April 2018 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Brand Finance Lanka, the pioneering brand valuation and strategy firm, celebrated its 15th consecutive year of publishing Sri Lanka’s most valuable and strongest brands at an event held in Colombo last night.
Last year’s top brand BOC was able to retain its position this year although its performance was somewhat overshadowed by the faster growing Dialog brand, which continued to narrow the gap at the top of the table. Dialog is the strongest brand on Sri Lanka’s league table with a triple A rating and has been growing faster than any of the top brands. There was speculation that it would overtake BOC this year.
Brand Finance Lanka Managing Director Ruchi Gunewardene said: “The rise of technology brands is a trend that we have seen across the world. For the very first time, technology brands took the top five positions in this year’s Brand Finance Global 500 table, with Amazon at No.1 followed by Apple, Google, Samsung and Facebook. These brands have overtaken the old legacy brands such as Coca-Cola, Citibank, Walmart and GE amongst others, dramatically changing the business and brand landscape within a short period of 10 years.
“This phenomenon has long been a possibility in Sri Lanka too, as we identified Dialog as has been the strongest brand on our table for many years, as a result of which their brand value has been growing much faster. It is now closely challenging the leadership at the top of the table. Brand strength is an important indicator that a brand has the potential to create value in the long term, which is exactly what has happened here.”
Conglomerate brands
To commemorate the 15th anniversary of publication of the league table, Brand Finance has introduced a separate table to recognise the Conglomerate Brands this year. Since these businesses dominate the Colombo Stock Exchange, and account for a major share of value whilst also topping the revenue rankings, this sector warranted a closer review in terms of how they are leveraging their corporate brands.
So, for the first time Brand Finance has published the conglomerate’s portfolio brand value as a separate table. The diverse businesses under their portfolio which include many business to business as well as consumer businesses within a single holding company does not enable them to be compared and listed alongside the most valuable consumer brands.
Commenting on the findings of this table, Gunewardene stated: “John Keells Holdings is the clear leader on this new league table with a value that is double that of second placed LOLC. John Keells has always been viewed as the premier blue chip conglomerate for many years and this result validates that. However, even we were surprised as to how far ahead they were relative to the other conglomerates on our list.
“The Rs. 66.2 billion brand portfolio value of John Keells Holdings is supported by a very strong brand which we have rated as AAA. It is the only AAA rated conglomerate on the list. John Keells is the epitome of a conglomerate in Sri Lanka. It has strong systems that it adopts across all the companies that they own. These include common HR practices, a common values system, sustainability practices, financial reporting all of which sets the standards for the other conglomerates to follow.”
Sri Lanka’s most valuable and strongest brands are identified through detailed analysis of data that is obtained through an exclusive market research study carried out by an independent market research firm and through publicly available financial information available on companies listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange.
According to Gunewardene, the challenge for those in the top 50 is to ensure they maintain that single-minded focus on growth by strengthening their brand. This needs to happen through understanding how each stakeholder impacts its brand and by defining or redefining the brand where relevant, and through constant differentiation through innovation.
The bottom 50 brands, on the other hand, have much work to do to establish themselves in their respective markets and work towards a strategic approach to long-term brand building.
The comprehensive review of all the brands with related analysis will be published in LMD’s Brands Annual next week.
Brand Finance Plc, the world’s leading brand valuation consultancy, advises strongly branded organisations on maximising their brand value through effective management of their brands and intangible assets. Founded in 1996, Brand Finance has performed thousands of branded business, brand and intangible asset valuations worth trillions of dollars. Its clients include international brand owners, tax authorities, intellectual property lawyers and investment banks.
Brand Finance is headquartered in London and has a network of international offices including a full-fledged office in Colombo through a joint venture partnership.
– Pix by Ruwan Walpola
By Shannon Jayawardena
Brand Finance Lanka, the pioneering brand valuation and strategy firm, gave recognition to Sri Lanka’s top brands while celebrating 15 years of publishing these valuable and strong names at an award ceremony held yesterday.
While many brands were awarded for their prominence and stable stance, the highlight of the event was last year’s top brand BOC retaining its position this year although its performance was somewhat overshadowed by the faster growing Dialog brand, which continued to narrow the gap at the top of the table. Dialog is the strongest brand on Sri Lanka’s league table with a Triple-A rating and has been growing faster than any of the top brands.
Brand Finance Lanka Managing Director Ruchi Gunewardene said: “We’ve being doing this for the last 15 years and the practice of brand evaluation has come a long way since we first began in 2004. We have done a considerable amount of work since by doing brand evaluation for making strategic decisions for the purpose of valuing and transferring the brand from one company to another and setting up special data purposes.”
Sri Lanka’s most valuable and strongest brands are identified through detailed analysis of data that is obtained through an exclusive market research study carried out by an independent market research firm and through publicly available financial information on companies listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange.
According to Gunewardene, the challenge for those in the top 50 is to ensure they maintain that single-minded focus on growth by strengthening their brand. This needs to happen through understanding how each stakeholder impacts its brand and by defining or redefining the brand where relevant, and through constant differentiation through innovation.
Commercial Bank and HNB were awarded for being in the top 10 most valuable consumer brands for 15 consecutive years, Ikman.lk was awarded as the number one e-commerce brans, Unilever Sri Lanka was awarded as the number one rank as a Multinational Corporate Brand and Brandix Lanka was awarded as the number one rank in the Corporate Export Brand category.
Dettol was ranked as the number one Most Loved Brand, John Keells Holdings was ranked as the number one Conglomerate Brand, Asiri Hospitals was ranked as the number one Healthcare Brand, Nestle was ranked as the number one Food & Beverage Brand.
People’s Leasing Company was awarded for being the best Non-Banking Financial Services Brand, Cinnamon Hotels was awarded as the best Hospitality Brand, Cargills Food City was ranked as the number one Supermarket Brand, Ceylinco Life was ranked the number one Insurance Brand and Dialog was ranked the number one Telecommunication Brand.
