Firms urged to focus on branding hinh anh 1Producing garment products (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) - Local firms need to pay due attention to their brand, including brand building, brand valuation and brand governance, said an official.

Dang Quyet Tien, deputy head of the Ministry of Finance (MoF)’s Enterprise Finance Department made the statement at a conference held in Hanoi on July 4.

“Internationally, brand is considered the core value of the business, with some brands’ value accounting for 70 percent of the total value of business assets. But in Vietnam, brand matters have not received the due consideration they deserve from local companies,” Tien said.

In fact, some foreign organisations recognised the value of several Vietnamese companies’ intangible assets, Tien said, adding that Vietnam has quite a lot of brands appearing in various prestigious rankings in the world.

As announced by Brand Finance, an UK-based brand consultation and valuation company, Vietinbank was recognised as one of the Top 100 Largest Banks in ASEAN and the only Vietnamese bank included in the 2016 list of top 400 most valuable banking brands in the world, with the brand value amounting to 249 million USD, Tien said.

Also according to Brand Finance, the Viettel brand last year was valued at 2.6 billion USD. The Vinaphone brand was valued at 1.04 billion USD and Mobifone at 391 million USD.

“Some enterprises even spent a large amount of money to build their own brands, but were confused when determining the value of the brands, which are intangible but precious assets for businesses,” Tien said.

Vietnamese enterprises’ brands are facing many challenges such as the infringement of intellectual property (IP), Le Ngoc Lam, Deputy Director of the National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam of the Ministry of Science and Technology said at the conference.

The Vietnam National Tobacco Corporation (Vinataba), coffee producer Trung Nguyen Group, Phu Quoc fish sauce and Ben Tre coconut candy are particular examples of Vietnamese firms being victims of IP infringement when they are circulating their products in the global market, Lam said.

Also having hired professional consultants in value branding, Tien said some State-owned enterprises when conducting equitisation processes have been provided with different values for their brands, causing big losses to the State budget.

Tien added that there are also still some limitations and overlaps in the content of legal documents stipulating the brand valuation methods.

Samir Dixit, Managing Director of Brand Finance Asia Pacific said brand equity is an intangible asset because the value of the brand is not a physical asset and is instead determined by consumer perception.

When building and developing a brand, firms need to focus strongly on Brand Strength indices (BSI) and Governance Strength indices (GSI), which are the two essential indicators measuring the efficiency of brand valuation, Dixit said.

The workshop was co-organised by the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Industry and Trade.-VNA
VNA