Finally we are in a decade that is easier to say! The “twenties” rolls off the tongue so much more easily than the “teenies” (was that even a thing?) and before that the clunky “noughties”!
At Curzon we are hugely excited about the year ahead, not to mention the dawn of the new decade, so we have taken the opportunity to reflect on a few of the “decade-defining” brands of the teenies. Brands that seem so commonplace today yet 10 years ago were either barely out of nappies or, to quote my mum, weren’t even a “twinkle” in our collective eye. Here’s our top 5 brands that defined a decade but what are yours?
Netflix
Streaming service Netflix started life in 1997 as a video/dvd business turning to streaming in 2010 and only entered the UK in 2012 – it must have snuck in while we were basking in Olympic glory! Today it has approximately 150 million subscribers worldwide, 10 million in the UK and provides services in 26 languages. Built on award winning productions such as House Of Cards, Orange Is The New Black and Breaking Bad it is regarded as one of the most successful dot.com businesses and has played its part in transforming the way TV is consumed and the way films are made. This was the decade that TV viewing changed; by 2019 almost 10% of all TV viewing hours came from subscription video on demand (i.e. excluding playback and broadcaster VOD) and will continue to grow.
Fever Tree
My word, pubs and bars have changed dramatically in recent years as they have had to evolve and offer a richer experience in the face of the growth of off-trade alcohol sales. Those that have survived have often had to up their food game significantly as well as deliver an out of home experience that is difficult to match at home. It is hard to say which came first; the explosion in the array of gins on offer behind UK bars today or the dramatic rise of tonic water brand Fever Tree.
Fever Tree was launched in 2004 and steadily built global sales by persuading bar owners that the quality of a GnT relies on the quality of the tonic, the 9/10ths of the drink itself. In 2018 The Guardian reported “Britain’s unquenchable thirst for gin proved the tonic for upmarket mixer maker Fever-Tree, as it reached a record value of £4.5bn on Tuesday after smashing profit forecasts”.
Amazon Prime
As more and more of us shop online and more often, Amazon Prime is at the vanguard of changing the UK’s shopping behaviours. The estimates are that over the decade subscribers to the on-demand delivery and streaming service now number well over 5 million people. With the soundtrack of the brands’ most recent ad campaign still ringing in my ears (……‘Everybody needs somebody to love’…..I still love that scene from The Blues Brothers!) the high street is reeling from a quieter than expected Christmas period with footfall down again on the previous year.
Our appetite for the convenience of home delivery will continue to grow and unless they adapt (online or off) we will no doubt see more bricks and mortar retail brands disappear to join the likes of Toys R Us, Tie Rack, Phones 4 U, BHS.
Deliciously Ella
Perhaps a surprising choice given that its scale (so far) but food brand Deliciously Ella was chosen as arguably the most high profile brand in the UK representative of the dramatic rise in interest healthy or healthier eating trends such as plant-based foods or “clean eating”. According to research company Kantar, over 4 in 10 main meals are now meat-free and 8% of UK households describe themselves as flexitarian.
Ella Woodward started a food blog in 2012 called Deliciously Ella and followed up with her first recipe book in 2015, Deliciously Ella Every Day. In the early days she was an advocate of clean eating, a phrase she says she never used, but turned against it after a backlash that questioned its health benefits. Today the brand is carried across a range of plant-based products including granola, protein balls and muesli; time will tell whether the brand has the strength to survive the next decade.
And from food blogger it is a very short step to the final entrant in our decade-defining brands, Instagram. At the start of the decade Instagram didn’t even exist and Facebook was still in it’s relative infancy, but in October 2010 the platform was launched and purchased by Facebook in 2012 for $1billion and today has over a billion users worldwide. In fact the platform has created an entire marketing industry in its own right with the explosion in Instagram Influencers that can be paid to endorse, profile or promote products or services. The platform now takes advertising, generating billions in revenue, and in the next few years the in-app shopping feature Instagram Shopping will open up an entirely new revenue stream that is estimated to reach $10-$20 billion dollars a year. Not a bad return for Mr Zuckerbergs investment!
There are so many brands that have transformed daily life and these were chosen to provide a spread across industries – technology, media, retail, food and drink. These were our selection; what are yours?