SOME say that with age comes complacency, and this point was raised by the chairman of the organising committee for the Singapore Prestige Brand Award (SPBA) 2008, who said older companies should not stop building up their brands.

Mr Chan Chong Beng told The Straits Times, 'What is quite sad is that for the Heritage award, there seems to be a lack of response. A lot of these older companies, they think they have already built a good brand and they are established already, so there's no need to re-look at what they have done.'

He was referring to the one of the four award categories, the SPBA Heritage Brands, which honours brands who are more than 30 years old, and hopes to see more entrants for the award in subsequent years. He also hopes to see more older brands re-establishing themselves especially in times of crisis.

The SPBA was organised by the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (ASME) and Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao. The 44 winners of all four award categories were unveiled yesterday at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel.

The Award, held annually since 2002, honours successful homegrown brands for their planning and execution of branding strategies.

The first award category is the SPBA Promising Brands, for brands which are between 3 to 8 years old. Among fourteen winners were Food Republic, and feng shui services provider Lotus On Water.

The second category is the SPBA Established Brands, for brands between 6 to 30 years old. There were twenty winners. Payment operator Nets and spa provider Rustic Nirvana were two of them.

The third category is the SPBA Heritage Brands, for brands which are above 30 years old. Five brands walked away with this award; leather giant Bonia and pet product retail chain Pet Lovers Centre were two of the winners.

The fourth category is the SPBA CitiBusiness Regional Brands, for brands which are at least 3 years old and with a presence in at least 5 foreign markets. There were also five winners, and among them are luxury watch retailer The Hour Glass and Ya Kun Kaya Toast.

One overall winner from each of the four categories would be soon chosen and revealed at an award presentation ceremony at the Shangri-La hotel, on Dec 3.