America is known for being the home of many of the world’s biggest brands, and is of course a massive test market that the rest of the world can look to for ideas about what might dominate global business next. There are a few emerging trends that we expect to see more of in the UK as they grow in popularity across the Atlantic.
1) Having everything for nothing
There is certainly a growing trend for on-demand services of all kinds, something that has been seen in America for some years now but only recently begun to catch on in the United Kingdom. For example, streaming services like Netflix and the newly launched YouTube Red are redefining the rules about how people pay for their entertainment – music streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal are doing the same in their market. Amazon has also been experimenting with food and drink delivery within hours, something they may be able to roll out to their whole product range within years. Everything is about paying a set fee for something and getting an unlimited amount back for your money, and since this is based around convenience and making life easy, people are increasingly getting on board with this. The idea of paying yearly subscriptions for music venues is something we expect to see launching within the next year, for example.
2) Brands get even more important
It’s now more common for small companies to launch themselves in a particular niche and gain traction quickly since people are more willing than ever to invest in brands that seem authentic and high quality. There has been a growing distrust for some time since the global economic crisis in big corporate brands, and supporting small business is known to be important to economic recovery, so expect to see more small brands taking advantage of this and growing fast in 2016.
3) Visual is key
It’s nothing new that visual marketing is incredibly important to any business, whether already established or not, but in 2016 we still expect this to become ever more important. Technology is allowing the fastest moving brands to get streets ahead of some of the competition, and people are spending more and more time in front of screens ready to absorb your visual marketing efforts. Video and social media are continuing to grow in terms of reach and the value they can add to your business in 2016.
