F
FEATURES TRENDS
For brands to compete in the next 10 years, a worldview will be imperative. pled with the romanticization of Silicon Valley’s overwork ethic, became the most prevalent cause of the 2010s millennial burnout. Add in a healthy dose of political instability, increasing financial inequality, outrage culture, and outcries like the #MeToo movement, and you’ve just opened the floodgates for what we now know as the new wellness lifestyle. Wellness has become all but ubiquitous. Rebellious acts of self-care like meditation, healthy eating, functional medicine, and partaking in the exercise cult du jour have now become commonplace, where most of the products you’ll need can be found at your local CVS. We’ve been searching for personal transformation these past 10 years. We wanted experiences that changed us. Even the brands we hated to love (or loved to hate) like WeWork, Uber, and Away tapped into this desire. No matter how many times we tore them down, we found others to build back up in the same way. They gave us identity, community, and belonging in unsafe places. They gave us a
20 Going On 30 2020 is an inflection point for brands By JASMINE BINA
B
rand strategy, at its most basic level, is a prediction. As a founder, you predict where the user is going in their journey, what the market will be able to bear, and how your competitors will move, so you may defensively place your brand in the landscape. In a way, a strategist’s job is to be a futurist. In my decade of brand strategy work, I have found that the most effective way to predict the future is to look back at the past. A world of change has happened in the space over the last 10 years, and if we pay attention, we’ll find the clues that point to what the next 10 may look like.
A decade of identity brands behind us Premium is the new luxury
I
f there’s one thing that’s dramatically changed the landscape in the last decade, it’s the outsized growth of the premium segment across all categories. From Whole Foods invading our neighborhoods, SUVs overtaking our roads, and a steady stream of subscription boxes like 46
Jumpstart Magazine
January 2020
Ipsy and Dollar Shave Club collecting in our homes, the last 10 years proved that people were ready to pay a premium for an elevated experience. Meanwhile, premium products were eating away market share from both the utility and luxury ends of the spectrum. Fueled by the direct-to-consumer (D2C) madness, which was bolstered by the VC world, this trend felt unstoppable until this year. Copycat majors like Walmart came out with their own ‘disruptor’ brands such as Allswell–a cheaper take on Casper. Meanwhile, conglomerates like P&G used their in-house venture arms to help launch companies such as Kindra, a line of hormone-free lotions and supplements. They revealed that D2C is not a defensible business model, while the huge spike in Facebook Ad costs proved that social targeting is not a sustainable advantage for D2C companies.
Lifestyle reigns supreme
L
ifestyle brands came in strong, but they took a specific turn halfway through the decade. The rise (and false promises) of the gig economy, cou-
