It’s a good time therefore to look at what makes a brand, well, a brand. Because not all brands are. In a nutshell, those brands that stand for something compelling and authentic, believable and campaignable are going to be the one to survive and prosper in good times and bad. It is precisely those brands where the experience matches the promise, where the functionality is closely matched by the inner longings of self-expression.
Fundamentally that’s what brands have become. A shorthand for self-expression. It’s the greatest gift that commerce has ever given to culture. Look around you. Look at the people, places, things and experiences that attract or resonate with you. Now take these experiences online and join the social networks, podcasts, or shopping sites that attract you.
This is how we build our world.
So trend spotters will note that these times will generate more likelihood that time savers of whatever form who consolidate anything remotely relevant, from food to information will be increasingly sought after. I therefore bring you a consolidated trend update as a means to check whether your brand will survive and prosper.
In the beginning:
Your brand has to have a promise, or an offer ( we call it a BIG IDEA), that is easy to understand, that is useful or relevant to consumers.
Your brand must also be easy to do business with: ethical, interesting, innovative even in its most basic utilitarian behaviour.
Your brand must tell a story that is true, makes sense or touches emotionally.
Now let’s see what trends are out there that might influence the behaviour or rationale of your audience:
• Mass production and globalisation got us into this mess (apart from bankers’ greed and total inability to get it that if you lend money to people with no money, you’re hardly likely to get paid back!), artisanship and local communities will get us out. People are going to stay closer to home; not just because petrol is expensive, but also because people tend to retreat inwards as times get tough. So downsizing, retrenchment and mass unemployment are certainly possibilities as is the rise of the entrepreneur as single enterprises. Brands that focus on the essential at great value will prosper.
• The basic fundamentals of the global economy haven’t changed – just our perception of it. India and China are still huge growth markets, sucking in raw materials at an astonishing rate. An increasingly prosperous middle class is refining its taste for fast food and fine dining. Overpriced property will find its bottom and then go up again, as increasing populations still migrate to capital cities and seek work there. One thing is for sure, you can’t make land anymore. Not that you ever could.
• The organic movement will grow, albeit at a slower pace. Cost fundamentals will still be outweighed by a move towards healthier eating as the anti-aging bandwagon rolls across the baby boomer generation. People are looking for more locally grown foods that support a healthier environment and a healthier lifestyle.
• It will grow in importance as companies seek to scale down by scaling up. Special purpose portals will proliferate with embedded transactions, info on-demand, and decision-support. Web 2.0 will move towards Web 2.5 as it becomes more intuitive and easy to use. And if it’s not, it will be left behind, burned by the Wiki’s and blogs. Speed is king as larger pipes enable seamless integration – from wireless, to mobile to digital TV. Other buzz-words include real-time data mining, knowledge engineering, online information storage and smart encryption.
• Green is still green, despite what some pseudo-trendy new york ad agencies will have you believe. The fundamentals haven’t changed. The USA is still pursuing bio-fuels which will have a knock-on effect on food prices and food allocation. We’re not reducing our CO2 levels fast enough to reverse global warming. Weather patterns are shifting, increasing hurricanes, earthquakes and unseasonable weather as the arctic glaciers fall into the sea. Population increases and migrations to developed countries, a reduction in birth rates with a corresponding rise in an ageing population is having a costly effect on our planet’s food, water and natural resources.
• Resilience, pro-activity, left-field thinking will become more commonplace as whole populations downsize, re-evaluate work-life balance, change careers, countries and lifestyles. Back to basics will become commonplace. Look for women in leadership, men at home, minority rights rule, DIY boom, cooperative enterprise, community power, individual and artist power, skill banks and, the balance of power shifts back from ‘multi’ to ‘uni’. From the conglomerate to the individual.
Finally management consultants and trend futurists will do OK as the former borrows your watch to tell you the time – useful in good times and in bad, while the latter relies on short-term memory syndrome. People will forget my predictions for 2012 by, oh, next week as time moves even faster and our attention span decreases with information overload!
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