Acronyms can often be the enemy of clear thinking, cluttering businesses with alphabet soup and clunky jargon. But some are useful short-hand that distil something unwieldy into a more digestible chunk that is a marketer’s dream.

So it has been with the "Bric" acronym, created in 2001 by a team led by Jim O'Neill, Goldman Sachs' chief economist and meaning Brazil, Russia, India and China.