Six of Britain’s most provocative thinkers will be outlining their vision of business in three years time at the opening event of Design in Business Week on Friday 27 October. And what they have to say won’t make comfortable listening for the hundreds of business leaders in their audience at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

Public resistance to the growing exploitation of brands is being predicted by more than one of the speakers, including Ralph Ardill, Marketing and Strategic Planning Director of the Imagination agency. He believes that the current trend for creating more and more ‘brand experiences’ will eventually provoke a backlash from increasingly knowing and cynical consumers.

He says: ‘With everything - from milk cartons to the backs of cows, and even the fields they graze in - seen as a media opportunity, brands intrude into every aspect of our lives. But they ignore the concerns of individuals, and unless there’s a change of direction there will be a consumer rebellion’.

Ardill argues that, in order for marketing and branding to grow in the future, companies will need structures that put something back into society. He will call on the creative industries to show clients productive ways to communicate which don’t pollute what he calls the "brandscape": the place where brands, consumers and society come together in a three-way relationship.

The theme of ‘brands under pressure’ will also be addressed by Mathew Taylor, Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research and the man who helped shape the Labour party’s policies during the 1997 general election. He believes that growing public concern about the environment and globalisation is also fuelling scepticism about brands, or ‘anti-brandism’ as he calls it.

Taylor warns that great global brands of today, like Coca-Cola and McDonalds might not survive in a future where they came to be regarded as belonging to ‘a discredited era of unrestricted capitalism’. Those involved in innovation, design and branding need to consider how to bring a sense of legitimacy to what they do.

Charles Leadbeater, the man behind the White Paper on the knowledge-driven economy, will also use the Design in Business Week 2000 keynote event to call for a re-think about branding. He will argue that as businesses become more knowledge-based, intangibles like brands will increase in importance. But, while brands traditionally been centrally managed, companies in the future will have to become more networked and decentralised.

Leadbeater will throw down the gauntlet to large organisations to reinvent themselves, both in terms of what they do and how they do it. ‘For example, there are things that need to be done about ownership - giving people a stake", he says. He also believes there is a need to promote a more entrepreneurial culture within organisations.

The role of the internet in re-distributing power between companies and their customers will be highlighted by another speaker, Will Murray. One of the UK’s leading brand consultants, Murray thinks companies will increasingly be challenged to be open about what they do. ‘The idea of stand alone brands, supported by advertising, is going to be shown to be rather hollow’, he says.

Another speaker at the event will be Christopher Frayling, Chairman of the Design Council and head of the Royal College of Art. He will call for a broadening of the understanding of ‘design’ to take it away from being perceived simply as a ‘visual trade’. He believes the term must also embrace those who commission design work and take responsibility for it within their organisation, but may not be professional designers themselves.

Completing the line-up of speakers will be Janice Kirkpatrick, co-founder of the design consultancy Graven Images and writer/presenter of the television series Designing Our Lives. Well known for her conviction that ‘tomorrow’s businesses must innovate or die’, she’ll be explaining why this applies to the design community as much as anyone else.

ends