Brand innovations, creative strategies, interactive communication media / mediums, or even über marketing efforts of today are not enough to satisfy the individual desires of tomorrow’s consumers. The creation of a hybrid brand ecology is the revolution needed to fuel the consumerism of 7.1 billion people. Considering all the above, here are my predictions on creating a ‘brand tomorrow.’

1. Brand Tomorrow
“It is probable that many things will happen contrary to probability.”
Paradox Box
Imagine 7.1 billion people of today’s world. Imagine all of them free from human and
economic poverty. Imagine them taking ‘consumer control’ by choosing their
commodities with their devices, based on no brand promise but on the freedom of
choice added with the freedom of will.
Let it sink in; let the implications make you wonder.
Let me begin, my friends, on my journey into ‘seeing’ the brands of tomorrow with
the consumers of eternity.
1. Not once in history, has any singular thing happened to human kind, all at
once -the world’s population together, sharing, and believing something that
resonates positively.
2. The world needs change (not in the political sense) but so far, even the
brightest change-makers have been mere droplets in the sea of
transformation, always missing the forest for the trees and forever blind to the
ways of the next beyond. Simply, there has been no ‘NEO,’ no ‘the ONE,’ a
person/institute that has lead mass/viral movements.
3. The poor have always been poor, and always been chained to the same
cycles of generational entrapment. Whether human or economic, those who
preach about poverty being history in a perfect world, forget that by saying
‘history’ one delays a generation with intellectual jargon and admits their
inability to create reactions that fuel ‘economic equality’ for commodities with
no borders in interconnected communities.
4. Consumer control was always a myth. We, the salespersons of the brands,
have been hypnotizing the target audiences with prolific messaging and
strategic mechanisms so that they buy more, eat more, see more, are more,
consume more. SPEND MORE. The money that you make is the money
we aim to take! Don’t blame us for being good in the trade of selling ideas –
we are only accomplices to the machines of growth. The top of the pyramid
uses the middle to control the bottom and we represent the hungry middle
class.
5. Brand innovations, creative strategies, interactive communication media /
mediums, or even über marketing efforts of today are not enough to satisfy
the individual desires of tomorrow’s consumers. The creation of hybrid brand
ecology is the revolution needed to fuel the consumerism of 7.1 billion people.
Considering all the above, here are my predictions1
on creating a ‘brand
tomorrow.’
1
Inspired by www.nesta.org.uk and refined by the author, Ishraq Dhaly

2. a. Prediction will become ubiquitous. Predictive tools (for consumer
profiling and future behavior mapping) will be part of main stream
culture.
b. The ‘Proximity War’ will intensify. The battle amongst applications,
services, protocols, and devices will rage on, capitalizing on location
awareness. The term SoLoMo (Social Media, Location, and Mobile) is
a thing of the past. Brands will actually start being directly associated
with applications that heavily investing in time stamp, motion detection,
NFC (Near Field Communication), and AR (Augmented Reality). What
will be monitored, targeted, and catered to by the brands beyond
SoLoMo are as follows:
1. Social Media
a. Specific platforms that we use
b. Our web habits
2. Location
a. Physical
b. Virtual
3. Mobile
a. Voice
b. Data
4. Proximity
a. Swarming (knowing who we mingle with at any
given time)
b. Home/Work/Other (just like Google automatically
knows we are where, very soon all brands will
know this and start push marketing)
5. Promotion
a. Onsite (Retail-based, web based)
b. Offsite (In other communication media)
6. Motion
a. Directional (which direction are we traveling
towards)
b. Speed (is our speed natural or unnatural)
7. Time Stamp
a. Date, time, time-zone, and tagging (specific
information will differentiate chronological choice-
making amongst brands.
8. Though unnecessarily long, the term should now be
rightly dubbed as SoLoMoProProMoTi. I dare you to
watch how, using this strategy, Google Glass2
, Google
Earth along with maps from Google, Apple, and Bing start
being in the forefront of branding.
2
Launching in 2014 but already is the world’s most visited website with over one billion visitors per
month. Google Glass is going to bring in a social renaissance along with most of the conspiracy fears
regarding privacy.

3. c. Goodbye Apple. Welcome Android. 3 years ago, the Android market
share was 3%. Now it stands at a whopping 75% where Apple is only
5% (while costing 3 times as much) while in China, the Android market
share is 90%. Additionally, it is predicted that by 2028, India is going to
overtake China to become the world’s most populated country and by
2050 the total world’s population is going to be a staggering 9.6 billion
people. I place my bet on Android-based technology to be preferred by
the teeming masses.
d. Individually-tailored online learning3
will soar due to adaptive
learning technologies.
e. Get ready for big prizes for even bigger challenges. Expect the
return of the ‘challenge prize’ for crowd sourcing solutions to social
problems. The ‘challenge prize’ was a method successfully deployed in
the industrial revolution. This method firstly defined a problem, then
created an open market for solutions, and finally offered a large
incentive (often cash) that made the consumers come out of the woods
in herds. I predict that governments and philanthropists will use more of
this strategy along with big corporation brands.
f. Universities will sponsor newer pipelines for public, social
innovations. Similar to MindLab, Stanford d.school, MIT Social
Innovations Lab, the public policy lab idea that prototypes new forms of
public service is now mainstream.
g. Digital Public Services finally figure out how to use the web. The
phenomenon of online shopping, electronic data transmission, cloud
services, Skype, Facebook, videos, BBC iPlayer, Twitter4
etc is being
used aptly. Though the next strategic inflection point will be the clever
public services that start hiring the smartest people who can leverage
the web.
Remember the web is forever, not just for Christmas.
h. Baby Boomers are back. Now in their 50’s and 60’s, these ‘aged’
consumers now are being marketed through films, they account for
rising e-book purchases, and they are the new ‘old’ gadget freaks
creating a lucrative market. Woe to us marketers for being prepared for
a ‘young’ consumer market and not ‘old’ complacent buyers. Let’s get
our act together fast!
i. Health knowledge will boom. Since knowledge and data has become
the health system’s vital currency, there has been a consistent rise in
open research databases that share the results of clinical trials, tools
that allow more participation in researches, computational models,
treatment comparisons, and experiential information. My question is
who will own our personal health data? My advice is watch out!
3
Reference: Edutech
4
fixmystreet.com is a site that the government of UK uses for public roadway maintenance

4. j. Frugal Innovation. Minimizing the use of resources in development,
production, delivery of goods or leveraging them differently will result in
dramatically low-cost brands which will out-perform the alternative.
Social missions will prosper using frugal innovations at-scale. Case
studies regarding this include innovations in delivering babies in slums
and low-cost heart surgery.
Finally, let me predict 3 key points for 2023, due to which a new type of
consumerism will be born for the brands of tomorrow:
1. 80% of the world’s population will be connected to super-information and data
will increase by 43%. So, scalable technologies will be in the center of
innovation focus while human capital will be one of the well-managed assets
of rising companies.
2. Conventional rational and/or emotional benefits attached to
products/services/brands will be obsolete.
3. Transactions will evolve from paper-based fiat currency to common digital
currency and very possibly, the mighty greenback will perish at the feet of
über currencies such as Bitcoin.
Author: Ishraq Dhaly
Date: 16/07/13
Introduction: The author is an advertising professional with 11 years of brand
experience. Please contact him at idhaly@gmail.com for all relevant questions.