If building big brands is so valuable why aren't there more success stories? 

My experience is the pay-off can be huge but there are obstacles that must be overcome. 

Big companies have the resources, however middle managers are more often empowered to "say no" than yes. 

Timing is everything. 

The only reason for small companies to exist is to think differently and act differently. My advice to big brand companies is take your smaller competitors very seriously and constantly track small companies' brand strategies. 

Disruption is almost always lead by product innovation. 

For example, Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo should take SodaStream seriously as a real game-changer. How did Folgers, at one time the leading coffee brand lose the retail coffee service market to Starbucks? 

In 1994 I was asked by Kodak to advise how they should think about their digital future? My advice was, "Their future would not be about picture taking, but picture making". Kodak at the time had a $20 billion market cap. They could have acquired both Adobe and LexMark together for less than $5 billion. The market cap of Adobe and LexMark today is much higher than $20 billion. In those days, Kodak was known for recruiting the best chemists from the best technical universities. But culturally Kodak was hermetically sealed in Rochester, New York which was a long way from the disruptive risk taking world of Silicon Valley. 

Perception leads reality. 

When I was appointed marketing VP of Pepsi-Cola Co. we were way outsold by Coca-Cola. 8 years later, brand Pepsi had passed brand Coke as the largest selling packaged goods product in the USA as measured by AC Nielsen. How did we do it?