In a personal surrounding on the Mitsubishi website, customers from now on can manage their own personal information and information about their car, read tips, and look through actions and offers. They also can request test drives and get reminders for inspections (am, Dutch). All brands start to communicate more personally. Everything they know about people is registered in the brand memory, which in turn is shared with the customer. In the future we will be able to consult our garage records, read or listen to all our contacts with the call center or garage, assemble our personal car, sell our car or even contact our own car. To check the mileage for example, or to upload some music. It all goes in the same direction..

Motorola is working on a pico projector: a very small projector which in the future can be built into mobile phones, and with which tomorrow's consumer can project films and images on walls, floors, or even in the air (mc, Dutch). This way again a practical screen evolves through which consumers can interact with each other and with brands. If we have a question about a product, we keep our mobile phone close to it, the brand agent appears, we ask our spoken question and then get a complete demo in a video. And if the projection of the mobile phone is not good enough, we can always switch to a 3D projection through a different, close-by device. Or maybe we should project right on the product for a special effect. This development adds to that.

Related trends

• More 3D

Scenes from computer game Archlord are embedded in the movie BenX. The movie makers say it is the first cinema movie 'in which game and movie are completely integrated'. Many of the scenes come directly from the game. The movie is about Ben, an autistic boy whose life occurs in the world of online gaming for more than half of the time (dc, Dutch). This way the virtual world slowly comes into being. Everything is connected. In the future movies will only be trailers of video games, we will look for a nice space to call each other and from there will continue the game. Calling, radio, watching TV, surfing, gaming, telling time, navigating, it all blends together and that time comes closer every day.

Dutch website Zoover.nl, a site with more than 300,000 vacation reviews, offers tour operators like D-Reizen the possibility to place facts, figures and reviews on their own website. Travel agencies can use the Zoover technology under their own label. Through this module they can for example send questionnaires through e-mail, to ask customers for their experiences after their vacation. The travel agencies this way can research general findings, but also has to ask their customers to leave a Zoover review when coming home (em, Dutch). This way the relationship between coaching brands and transaction brands slowly becomes clear. Zoover becomes the travel coaching brand, responsible for the contacts with the customer. And companies like tour operators, airlines and car rentals become transaction brands. Transaction brands which only through excellent achievements will survive in this landscape. This landscape in which the consumer dominates. This is very logical: after all, he is the one who pays. This is a step in that direction.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

At Amazon Fresh, part of Amazon.com, consumers now can order fresh food. At the moment as a try-out just in Seattle. Delivery is very flexible. Through 'DayBreak' products are delivered on the doorstep by early morning, through 'Daytime Delivery' they are delivered the next day in a 1-hour time slot chosen by the consumer, and through 'Local Pick-Up' consumers can pick up their order the same day (em, Dutch). Very slowly we start to also order our daily groceries online. However, it is very hard to break through existing patterns, and for people who have been grocery shopping for years and years it is hard to break through this pattern. But the last ten years a new generation has come into being that thinks and acts online completely. The teenagers from then are today's people in their twenties. That generation ask themselves why they would haul a case of beer themselves? And that generation now has money too. The delivery remains a challenge. Now it still takes a day, in the future we will receive our order within a couple of hours. 'Normal' grocery shopping stays, but gets a different meaning. This is a small step in that direction.

The Dutch version of the Yellow Pages, Gouden Gids (part of World Directories), added a new service to its website: consumers can now make a personal account in which they can mark companies. In the future they will also be able to write reviews about service providers like plumbers, masseurs or hair dressers. As a spokesman said: "We are still looking for the best way to do this. After all, you don't want competitors to write bad about each other." (em, Dutch). Brands make their services more and more personal. Now for the anonymous consumer. In the future the consumer will be known by name, and be officially registered (through DigID for example). A brand like Gouden Gids then knows exactly who it is dealing with. Then, through a connection with social networks, it will be able to not just show reviews, but reviews from the consumer's first, second or third grade network: 'A friend of your neighbor has experience with this painter and strongly advises against him.' This way brands like Gouden Gids become valuable, and painters have to make sure their service is perfect. This is a small step in that direction.

On the Dutch site Reisvrij.nl consumers can compile their own vacation based on the availability of hotels, airplane companies and car rentals. With this Reisvrij.nl is the first Dutch travel website with the so-called Dynamic Packaging technology. Their offer includes at least 300,000 accommodations, over 10,000 destinations plus the complete range of all airline companies, including lowcost airlines that leave from the Netherlands and the adjacent areas.
And this is how travel coaching brands are slowly formed. It starts with completeness. Then with personalization and then the social environment of the individual consumer will be involved. This is how brands with an enormous meaning for the consumer are created. This is again a step in that direction.

Vodafone starts a Web Relations department, apart from the existing Investor Relations and Public Relations departments, to monitor the web. The new, 6-persons department will actively follow web logs and discussion forums to monitor the public image of the company and its services (em, Dutch). In fact, you could say that Web Relations is the same as 'Stakeholder Relations'. Without a doubt, the department will not just look at what is being said, but also at who says it. Is it a (former) customer, a (former) employee, a (former) stakeholder, a specialist, a technician, or a combination? And then the public comments of this person will be recorded in the HRM, IR, or CRM system. And Vodafone comes with a proper answer for this person. This way the brand develops more openness, and the dialogue about brands between customers becomes more and more transparent. This is another good step in that direction.

Compare Group, the mother company of product and price comparing site Vergelijk.nl, goes international. They were active in Belgium and Finland already; now extension to Germany and Spain is in sight. Poland, the Czech Republic and Sweden seem to be interesting as well. Over the last couple of years the company has invested in technology to be used in several countries, which can be adapted to local differences in for example product codes and specifications (em, Dutch). Comparing sites lay the foundation for coaching brands. They will grow world wide and thus be capable of comparing all products worldwide, real-time. The challenge will be to make the first selection which best suits the (even unspoken) wishes of the individual consumer. That exactly is what distinguishes coaching brands.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Online Payment Provider PayPal now also offers the possibility to make payments through banks. With a PayPal account customers now have the choice between payments through credit card or through a bank account, for local as well as international payments (cc, Dutch). This way a brand taking care of all our payments slowly comes into being. Whether it is through a credit card or directly through a bank account (debit), PayPal takes care of it. Starting from this total package, PayPal has the possibility to grow into a financial coaching brand. It can introduce a home brand account. It can start offering additional services like instant loans. This way PayPal gets more and more meaning in our lives. This is a small step in that direction.

In a personalized viral video campaign by Postbank, a children's choir loudly sings the client's name: 'Thank you Erwin, thank you Erwin, thank you Erwin!' (pb). Brands start to address people by name in a personal (yet automatized) dialogue. People are very alert in hearing their names. Even in a very busy bar, where it is impossible to follow all the different dialogues, we immediately pick up if somebody is mentioning our name. Therefore we will get to see this form of communication a lot more. Now in a campaign, later also more structural as part of the dialogue we have with the brand agent.

Through Skype it now is possible to take Dutch language lessons, and pay them by the minute (sb). This easy accessible service from a distance will contribute to consumers helping each other worldwide. Who is better in helping you learning Chinese than a real Chinese person? These are personal experiences which we pay by the minute. Like we will start using movies, games or software and pay by the minute. It is just an example of the development of the experience economy. This is a nice example of things really going that way.

Related trends

• Experiences

I made up a work title for my new book: Pamper Planet. This book describes what the world will look like in 2050. After we have gone through a tumultuous time, we will get a period of rest, peace and safety being the worldwide standard. Pamper Planet describes a very soft, friendly world in which basically everything seems to be in balance. A world in which every resident will be completely pampered. A world which has elements of paradise. That world we are building now. Daily we take small steps in this direction. And 2015, the year I write about regularly, is just an intermediate stage (like 2050 will be as well).

That world is partly visualized in some Science Fiction films. It is a combination of The Matrix, A Space Odyssey, West World, The Game, Minority Report, 1948, and Demolition Man. I don't watch movies so often, but there must be many more movies showing elements we can expect in 2050. All things to be researched after the summer. The question now is of course: do you think 'Pamper Planet' is an appealing title? I already registered the domain name, just in case . Let me know!

Related trends

• 2050-2100: Pamper planet

This mirror shows incoming text messages as soon as somebody approaches it (tip christian). This way we get more and more interactive displays in our lives, through which we can enter the virtual world. Now we receive text messages, later we will see all possible text, audio and video messages. And we'll be able to react directly. Through speech. And our brand agents will appear in the mirror like they have always been here. This is a small step in that direction.

Dutch film specialist MrMovie can now also be reached through Skype. If you add mrmovie.nl as a Skype buddy, you can directly ask questions about TV, movies or cinemas. Brands start dialogues through all media. A dialogue is a dialogue. In the future we can ask a spoken question through our mobile phone, 1 second later get an overview of facts about a movie on a bigger display, and finally get a preview on a third screen. Everything is interconnected. And MrMovie is just the assistant, available for us any time and anywhere. He doesn't care what display we want to use. This is a small step in that direction.

Chinese actress Xu Jinglei nowadays is the most read blogger in the world with more than a hundred million page views per month. Chinese author Han Han takes the second place of world's most read bloggers. Analysts expect his web log to exceed the hundred million page views very soon (em, Dutch). China and India slowly but surely start dominating the world (without being dominant by the way). Even the greatest celebrities will come from China in the future. This is a small step in that development.