行情越差，值得投的品牌反而越清晰

In Singapore I met a VC friend whose firm has deep ties to Temasek. Asked what they look at in Malaysia, he said: semiconductors, and brands. Brands surprised me, since DTC has been out of favour with traffic so expensive. He only said the worse the market, the clearer the brands worth backing. A video by Cheng Qian on Coca-Cola's financials helped me understand. In 2024 Coca-Cola had revenue of US$47 billion and net profit of US$10.6 billion with only 69,000 employees, far more productive per head than Danone or Nestlé. It isn't really a drinks company. It sells syrup and brand licences, leaving the heavy capex of bottling and distribution to others, so its small slice of each bottle is almost pure profit. Why don't others copy it? Because of brand. Tea drink brands launch something new every three months or customers forget them; Coca-Cola hasn't changed its product in over a century. It invests in human memory: the post cites very high early advertising ratios and a US$5 billion ad budget in 2024, a hundred years of continuous spending. Advertising isn't an expense but an investment, compounding over time. In fast-growing Southeast Asia, few brands have yet achieved this kind of memory capture; most still fight over traffic, conversion and SKU counts. That's business, not brand. Buffett bought Coca-Cola in 1988 for its structural position. For founders: if you make your product a memory point for users, you're no longer selling goods but managing time.