Who's in, who's out?

Unsurprisingly, O'Neill's rivals started to snipe. Some economists said it was ridiculous to make forecasts as far out as 2050, particularly since many of O'Neill's projections seemed to involve extrapolating current growth on a straight line. Others took issue with the idea that the four Bric countries could – or should – be described as a group. “Economically, financially and politically, China overshadows and will continue to overshadow the other Brics,” analysts at Deutsche Bank argued. Some banks tried to ban their employees from using the B word. “Why the hell should we do Goldman's marketing for it?” says the chief executive of one of the world's biggest investment banks. Meanwhile, out in the market, some investors suggested it would be better to talk about Bricks (with Korea included), or Brimck (with Mexico as well) or even Abrimcks (chucking in the Arab region and South Africa). One market wag joked that somebody should start trading the Cement bloc (Countries Excluded from the Emerging New Terminology).

O'Neill fought back. The Goldman team started to crank out Bric research, looking at everything from the future size of the Indian middle class to car use in Brazil. In an effort to soothe some ruffled feathers, in 2005 O'Neill tried to explain why Korea and Mexico had not been included in his big idea (the rather arbitrary-sounding reason was that they were members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). He also tried to placate some of the non-Brics by offering a new term: the “N-11”, or Next Eleven nations on the list to emerge as powers. This was a confusingly broad club, encompassing Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam, but within months companies such as Nissan and WPP were bandying “N-11” around their boardrooms. Another marketing tag – or boundary on a cognitive map – had been born.