According to Business Week magazine, in 2008Coco-Cola's brand value was 66 billion dollars, while IBM and Microsoft were 59 billion dollars each.
Brand building costs money, but the real challenge comes in integrating a campaign to include all stakeholders in the industry as everyone has different goals and objectives, Liyanage said.
"Investment is a problem but it's more like an obstacle," Liyanage said. "You need to develop strategy for industry, that's what lacking here.
"Brands are created when the entire value chain is integrated."
Marketing professionals have to identify what's lacking in the market and figure out how to best serve that vacuum. This is one of the key challenges, Liyanage said.
"What would the consumers miss if the brand was not there?" Liyanage said. "You need brands that can exploit market opportunities."
"The predicament of the third world is we don™t have brands," said Uditha Liyanage, head of Sri Lanka's postgraduate institute of manag