Fishburn Hedges

26.01.2010

Ten years ago, there was no iPod, Twitter or Facebook, and Google was in its infancy.  Here, Adrian Day, managing partner of Further, our sister branding and reporting agency, looks at ten brands which may be dominating the headlines in ten years’ time.

The internet was the major influence that shaped brand evolution in the noughties. The next ten years (themselves as yet unbranded, although ‘tweenies’ is our prediction) are going to be characterised by incredible change.

The emergence of a significant consumer demographic in nations like China and India, ageing Western populations, the importance of low carbon – these are just some of the trends that will create an entirely unprecedented climate for brands in the next decade. 

The brands that go furthest will be those that are best placed to capitalise on this changing climate.

The ten brands are:

1. United Breweries Group, the Indian conglomerate that markets most of the country’s beer and its airline under the Kingfisher brand.  It has bought Whyte and Mackay, which owns Scotch brands including Dalmore, Jura and Black Dog, and is headed by Dr Vijay Mallya, the Indian Richard Branson.  It is the “world’s number 3 spirits company” – but how many of us have heard of it? Expect that to change.

2. Build Your Dreams, a young Chinese brand originally established in 1995 as a battery maker.  It claims to have about 30 per cent of the world’s mobile phone battery market, but more recently has been setting out ambitious plans to become more of a household brand name. 

Its new automotive division, BYD Auto, is seeking to become one of the most recognised manufacturers of electric and hybrid cars in the world.  With car ownership in China – expected to be home to more than one in five people on the planet by 2020 – set to rocket, and polluting petrol becoming more expensive and scarce, BYD has an excellent opportunity. 

And Warren Buffet has invested – buying a 10% stake…

3. MTN, South African mobile phone brand that describes itself as "the leader in telecommunications in Africa and the Middle East" and is active in 21 countries.

MTN currently has more than 40 million subscribers across its operations – and, since 2004, Africa has been the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world, so the stage is set for phenomenal growth.

4. Natura Cosmetics is Brazil's biggest domestic cosmetics brand. It develops, manufactures and distributes cosmetics, fragrances and toiletries and is known as the leading company in the sustainable utilisation of Brazil's biodiversity for use in these products.

Natura has more than trebled its net revenues since 2001 – yet its distribution is primarily direct sales in Latin America.  International expansion could make Natura the biggest in the world.

5. Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard Branson’s attempt to become the world’s pioneer of commercial space travel, leveraging the power of the Virgin brand.  Branson unveiled the rocket plane on 7 December 2009 and the 2.5 hour flights into space are expected to begin within two years.  Thousands of people have already booked their $200,000 tickets. 

Virgin Galactic is a unique, clean-tech project which will also act as a test-bed for new and clean technologies, such as the use of carbon composites in large aircraft, which have applications across a range of industrial sectors.

6. Kaspersky Lab, Russia, makes products and technologies that provide protection for over 250 million computer and internet users worldwide.

With information flow via the internet now the very lifeblood of international business and home entertainment, yet with increasingly sophisticated threats to internet security ever more prevalent, demand for its products is set to grow.

7. Westover Clinics, a London-based one-stop-shop concept for healthcare. The health and fitness debate has come a long way in the last decade and a more consumer-esque approach is budding, which should flourish over the next ten years.

If Westover’s focus on “wellness”, blending fitness, nutrition and life coaching, and combining GPs, health screenings and dentistry, proves a success, the brand could become huge.

8. OnLive. Questions still abound over whether this potentially revolutionary ‘on-demand’ video game service will work – but the company insists the technology is in place to allow the world’s millions of gamers to stream games in real time over the internet, essentially renting rather than buying them, with no need to own expensive consoles. 

If increasingly fast broadband services can cope, for a market that is bigger than the film industry (generating $11.7 billion in 2008 in the US alone, with one game, Grand Theft Auto IV, taking a jaw-dropping $500 million in sales during its opening week), this service has the potential to be game-changing.

9. Climate Exchange, which aims to own, operate and develop exchanges to facilitate trading in environmental financial instruments, including emissions reduction credits, designed to support and lower the economic costs of achieving environmental objectives. 

Copenhagen might not have panned out as hoped, but the need for action on climate change can only increase – and success will likely rely on the markets and innovative financial mechanisms that allow carbon reduction to be built into economic ambition.

10. Plastic Logic, a spin-off brand from Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory.  Its principal product is a flexible A4-size and robust plastic electronic display the thickness of a credit-card, which will be used in Barnes and Noble’s new QUE proReader, launching worldwide this year. 

It plans to replace paper, allowing electronic documents to be transported and read just like paper documents.  Come 2020, we might be reading our newspapers on flexible plastic screens during our daily commute. If so, Plastic Logic could well have become one of the most famous brands of the decade.

To select these brands we researched both established and up-and-coming companies from different sectors, industries and countries. We then identified those that show the potential to make the most of the social and economic conditions predicted to shape the next few years and beyond.

Further is the new name for the recently merged branding and reporting agency, FHD, part of Fishburn Hedges Group, and specialist corporate reporting firm, Pauffley. For more information, please see www.furthercreative.com