Site visitors and test drivers of two especially outfitted new BMW's stood in connection with each other for two weeks through sound and video. Both cars are outfitted with a camera that registers what the driver sees through the front window and, to find out exactly what the driver thinks of the car, the website lists the number of the telephone in the BMW. Anyone can call and ask questions. For two weeks, the images were available on a live stream on interactieveproefrit.nl (Interactivetestdrive.nl; Dutch). Thanks to GPS interested parties can follow the cars using detailed maps. The site also shows text message reactions of the drivers. A test driver can also add a specially designed 'widget' to, for example, their personal profile on Hyves or their blog. This way people can watch along with the test drive on various sites and people can invite others to watch or to call.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands connect the members of the bran tribe. Whether we call them employees, fans, ambassadors, car divers or wannabees; everyone who feels emotions for the brand will feel connected to the brand and thus each other. You can connect people through the physical world, in the virtual world, or both at the same time. BMW here shows a nice example of the last. For now it’s just a specially equipped BMS, but later this will be the standard on all of them. Currently you need to make special link, but later you can just ‘log into your car’. Currently you still need to connect, later you can invite your friends to watch along with a press of a button. It’s all getting simpler.

Related trends

• Brand coming out

Trung Bui, a research assistant at University Twente has developed a system that can deal with the user's emotions. To illustrate the effectiveness Bui applied it to a navigational system for relief workers which takes into account the stress experienced by a user. The navigational system receives input from a loose 'stressmodule' which measures the relief worker's stress levels. When communicating with the user, the system will take this into account. In a situation wherein the user's stress levels are heightened, for example, the system will take into account the fact that the user is more prone to make mistakes and will ask for confirmation more often.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Step by step we learn to react better and better to humans. First to typing, then clicking, by now a little better to our voice, but this kind of development shows that it’s definitely not going to stay like this. Eventually ‘listening’, ‘observing’, will be the most normal thing in the world for brands.

Philips has launched a 3-dimensional HDTV for the business sector. This screen, with a resolution four times as large as normal TVs (Quad HDTV), allows the viewing of videos in stereo without additional glasses. The technology is similar to the technology used in stereoscopic post cards. By the by, one can't really call it a TV because there's no tuner in it: watching the programmed video streams of broadcasting companies isn't possible. It costs 25,000 dollars.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’re making the world more and more real. This type of screen will break though with game consoles. That we can watch a passive movie (even if it is 3D HDTV) is a nice bonus. With an extra we can even watch ‘old-fashioned’ television, but for new devices this will be less and less emphasized. The fact that this device doesn’t have a tuner already shows that. Eventually we’ll hand such screens on the wall and we’ll have the feeling that there’s a hole in that shows us a different, usually nonexistent, space.

Nike knows how to stimulate runners to ever higher performances. Nike sends a spoken congratulations though Lance Armstrong's ear plugs if you've run your personal record and plays a personally chosen 'power song' when your energy is flagging. Runners can also encourage each other with rewards, for example emails which you can only open after a specific performance. Furthermore competitions held in different places at the same time are connected to one another.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Especially the sports sector shows how brands can encourage people to reach higher levels through the use of technology. Mutual battles, motivating examples, the feeling of wanting to be part of something, emotional sounds, rational numbers that stimulate other parts of the brain: all possibilities are used. Yet it doesn’t end here: the measuring of one’s physical and mental condition; do we have the right nutrients?; are we concentrating enough or thinking of other things?; Are we moving correctly?; If not, how should we move?; And what’s possible, given the circumstances? Eventually a personal sports brand will be even better than a human counterpart, but that’ll take a few decades yet.

And a real coach doesn’t choose a specific kind of brand of shoe, but the shoe that lets you perform. This is how Nike can outgrow its status as a shoe producer and earn money by coaching runners. This direction seems to get ever clearer.

Related trends

• More involved

Vergunningenkaart.nl (Licensemap; Dutch) shows all current building, cutting and other licenses from the neighborhood in one orderly map. The site shows current municipal license applications for a large amount of Dutch municipals on Google Maps. It uses public announcements on overheid.nl.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In a commercial environment consumers can force an entrepreneur to change its behavior by creating declining sales. The stock market too is a good way to get a company moving. With the government it’s different. Here it’s the civilians that show the initiative. When the governments of the world will soon have the email address of every inhabitant (maybe social_numer.nl@world.com) we’ll start to inform them too. Indeed, for example, of the licenses your neighbors applied for, the change in traffic laws for those who hold a driver’s license or the change in the times the garbage is collected. And so the brand ‘government’ or ‘the Netherlands’ will also enter the dialogue.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

Dutch telecomoperator Hi makes a backup of your telephone book. Users can do this by logging onto Hi and activating the service. They'll receive a text message with the cell phone's setting. Through the phone's menu an online back-up can be made of the telephone numbers. Making and updating a back-up of the Hi-phonebook is free. Who doesn't have a limitless internet bundle pays for the use of data.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how social coaching brands are slowly In 2008 they guard your contacts, some allow you to chat to contacts, others calling them and with the next one you can cam. A few steps further along we won’t think in terms of phone numbers or email anymore, but solely in people, in names, in relationships, in emotions. What you feel with people and then say ‘I’d like to talk to them again!’ And that happens then. You no longer need to look for or save a number, trusted relations will just always be with you. Facilitated by social coaching brands.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Figures from ICANN show that Africa has the most new IPv6-connections. IPv6 is the newest and necessary version of the Internet Protocol. 22 percent of the new connections in Africa have an IPv6-prefix.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

After China and India have been able to develop themselves to their full glory, it’s Africa’s turn. It’ll be a few decennia yet, but the infrastructure is being laid down.

At loket aangepast lezen (counter adapted reading; Dutch), a foundation founded by vereniging openbare bibliotheken (association of public libraries; Dutch), blind and partially blind people can order Braille books 24/7 by phone through a speech recognition application. The expansion of the accessibility of the library service to people with a visual limitation is, according to its founders, unique in the world.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The blind and partially blind will find the world a lot easier. The amount of companies that offers it’s information spoken will explode; after all, brands will enter a spoken dialogue. Currently they’re specifically ordering Braille books, but ordinary books can be read when they’re in the library, or even at home from their cell phone. Soon they’ll be able to wear glasses which only enlarge the letters they’re looking at, or glasses which automatically read what they’re looking at, reads the book in front of them, or just reads aloud without a book that you listen to directly and continue where you left off last time. No more need for a cd. Just say ‘tell me’.

But that doesn’t go for just the blind. Discoveries like these will offer people in illiterate countries unknown possibilities to develop themselves. Without being able to read or even learning to read And brands that facilitate them.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

Google, in honor of its 10-year anniversary, pulled out Google 2001. They're the oldest search results still available. In the passing years the logo has changed, but searching still happens in exactly the same way. Most of the sites found no longer exist.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Traditional brand thinking is based on building a consistent image. When the strategy changes, all the brand’s expressions have to chance. It was absolutely necessarily; people are always shown the brand in a flash and based on that a brand image is formed in people’s heads. However, the times have changed. For no reason, people can spend half an hour visiting a brand (virtually). Showing how you used to look, where you came from, what your origin is, that’s only powerful. It makes a brand authentic.

Tip for every brand: always save your old websites!

The term 'personal brands' is nowadays used in different ways. I personally use it as a term for a new type of brand that will be created from the writing of my book, but round about the same time the term also came to be used differently: for presenting a person as brand. The fact that I, furthermore, focus on that last using the term 'personal branding ' doesn't exactly reduce the confusion. When I was interviewed by Emerce about this the chaos was complete. Time for a new terminology!

This new term will be used in my lectures and workshops (that's my core business), here on the blog (in both Dutch and English) and in my new book (working title 'Pamper Planet'). I'm thinking of 'coach brand' or 'coaching brand'. What do you think? Or is another name better?

In the printed version of Emerce, magazine for e-innovation, is an article containing my personal branding strategy, my way of presenting myself as a brand. The article ' Ik ben mijn bedrijf' (I am my company, Dutch) is available as PDF. The term 'personal branding ' can cause confusion with the term 'persoanl brands' which I use myself. In that case it's about brands that present themselves humanoidly and let themselves be represented by artificial humanoids. That's why I'll soon introduce a new term in light of my new website (2.0). Suggestions are welcome! Anyone who wants to know more about my strategy can (re)read the posting with the introduction of ErwinVanLun.com.

update Nov 2008: nowadayws, I use the term 'coaching brand'.

Last spring Arjan Haring of Haring Institute of Happiness and I organised a private session with magician Ramana (Dutch). Together with twenty scientists, artists and smart people from businesses we were all over Ramana, all interested, on the edge of our seats, to understand what we were seeing. Were they magic tricks? Illusions? Or were these phenomena which we don't understand scientifically yet, but can use?

The fact that a few days earlier he'd won the tv-show De Nieuwe Uri Geller (The New Uri Geller, Dutch) made this session extra special. (Thankfully, we'd already booked him in December, which kept things affordable.)

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

To understand the world you have to be able to let go of what you’ve learned before. From the moment we arrive on earth, perhaps even sooner, we note certain observations that help us survive and we drop other things to the side. It goes so far that we can’t even experience many phenomena any more. We see them as impossible. Perhaps you can call this and illusion.

But also other things which we don’t view as a part of our daily lives, that aren’t normal, call it paranormal, belong to this way of thinking. From my own experiences I know children who arrive on the earth paranormal, make unexplainable predicts and with whom, years later, the parents say they’re ‘thankfully doing a lot better’. Which means they’ve stopped showing the paranormal behaviour, or show it less. Thankfully, because it was almost impossible to handle and it made the child unhappy. That illustrates exactly what I mean. And that’s what I’m looking for. Always looking for. Because the intrinsic human being, the naked-born human being, shows far more how the future could develop than watching and researching the world citizens of today.

Inspiring! Thank you, Ramana!

Futhermore, Ramana will soon host a session with a company of traditional Indian jagudars (street magicians) and an Indian fakir/mentalist. The performances take place in in the Tropentheater (Dutch) in Amsterdam on Saturday 22nd of November and Monday the 24th at 20.30 and on 23 November in the Zuiderpershuis in Antwerp at 15.00. I’m going to watch again.

Tudou, the biggest Chinese video sharing site (comparable to YouTube), has started the online High Definition-streaming of 100,00 television series. Daily, a hundred Chinese tv broadcasting companies upload their episodes in High Definition to HD.Tudou.com.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Home entertainment coaching brands ensure that all content ever created is gathered together, or at least have access to it. YouTube-like sites can be entertaining, but before they actually do this they need a wide assortment, be available on every TV-screen and and furthermore have a detailed profile of the viewer and the friends of the viewer. This lets you at least see what your friends (and family or colleagues) watched yesterday. That does knock out the television broadcasting companies, however. This is a step in that direction.

It turns out the computer can understand the barking of dogs better than humans, and it can be used to better understand the language of these animals. During a study in the barking of dogs scientists have recorded 6,000 barking sounds of 14 Hungarian Mudi's (a kind of sheep dog). Six different 'barks' were recorded: barking to strangers, barking during a fight, barking 'to take a pee', barking for their ball, barking during playing and barking when it's left behind. After analyzing the digital versions of these 'barks', the computer program connected the right bark to the right action in 43% of the cases. This is almost identical to the score of humans (49%). The computer had a better score with 'walking' and 'ball', while humans scored higher on 'playing' and 'being left alone'. Furthermore the computer could better distinguish which bark belonged to which dog (52%). Earlier, the scientists had determined that humans were practically unable to make this difference.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Computers will understand the world better than we do. Currently they get dogs just about equally, soon much better. Then personal environment brands, brands that in future use this kind of advanced forms of this type of technology, to help us understand the world better by saying, for example ‘your dog wants to take a walk’ or ‘this dog wants to greet you and isn’t angry’. Or, in stranger environments, ‘this snake won’t hurt you now. It’s just eaten and is on its way to its lair.’ This kind of insight, this kind of technology, means that we’ll be able to walk a little freer in the world.

This sphere is completely interactive: it responds to the heat of the hands of one or more people. It's a research project by Microsoft named Sphere.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We get more and more screens surrounding us. Big, small, round, square, triangular, chewable, tapeable, origami proof and more silliness like that. All screens will, however, be completely interactive: respond to voice, to images, to sounds, to touch. But actually those screens only function as an interface to something else: the virtual world of brands. It’ll be the challenge to shape these in such a way that they can handle all these types of screens.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

MediaZoo is an online application that makes the user's music available from every location. The music library application is now slowly becoming complete Open Source, which means that music fans can build their own applications for the library. You can think of networking possibilities, such as profiles, message and commenting systems, or an intelligent recommendation system for songs. MediaZoo already offers a few functions, such as uploading music, but also the playing and sharing (with a limited amount of friends) of songs. The service hopes to become the largest library of rights-free music.

Users can, if desired, add their rights-free music to 'The Zoo'. A payment or donation system with which users can support musicians is another example of a possible feature that could be developed by the community. In the meantime MediaZoo Language Localisation, a subproject of the MediaZoo Open Source-project, has already started. This should make the service available in several languages.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

All brands are going through similar situations. All brands are involving their community, are experiencing a brand coming out, after which the direction won’t be with the head office, but with the people. They’ll all enter the dialogue. But brands with a symbolic function, like music brands, can also become very strong in a friends network (more so than, say, an insurance brand). This is a nice example of a brand that’s allowed to start with a clean slate and does it completely differently from the start.

Related trends

• Brand coming out