Lisa, the brand agent of Rabo Mobiel (Rabo Mobile; Dutch), now also listens to open questions asked by the consumer. Whoever calls customer services (0900-9890) will immediately get to speak to Lisa. With the help of open question speech recognition Lisa can bring them into contact with the most suitable person of customer support. If they're not immediately available, customers won't need to stay on hold, but will be called back. That increases the positive customer experiences and efficiency of customer services.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

And again the dialogue is shaped a little further. Lisa’s already answering simple questions, but she’ll be able to handle more and more complex questions. Currently Rabo Mobiel still searches for a specialist in the call center, but soon the questions will become so specialistic that Lisa will connect you with the specialist of Rabo Mobiel in the Netherlands and then in Europe and eventually in the world. We manage to automate ever more communication; ever more interesting is the work that’s left.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

In the London-based restaurant Inamo you can order food from your table, play games with other people in the restaurant, pay or order a cab. A beamer which projects images onto the black table surfaces makes it possible and through the use of a mouse visitors can browse through the menu and view images of the food. After placing your order you can view how your food is prepared using the 'chef cam'.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Two structural developments are hiding in this example. Firstly this kind of development will lead to the creation of a next generation entertainment place where you can also eat. Like arcades arose from technology, technology in the restaurant kitchen will develop. Furthermore the delivery of additional service will definitely be given a shot. Soon automatic payment will be so smoothly arranged that we won’t even check the receipt. We’ll be recognized when we enter, get the suggestion of the month tailored to our wants, and we’ll just as easily walk outside again and money will be arranged for us. Also in large restaurants, also in other branches of those restaurants. That’s how the dialogue can bind people to the (restaurant)brand and this is an example of a development in that direction.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

Wehkamp.nl, a Dutch e-commerce, now lets consumers react to press releases sent by the company. Then the company keeps a close eye on the reactions. For example, the reaction to the press release Nieuw Magazine Wehkamp.nl (New Magazine Wehkamp.nl; Dutch):

Marjolein:

Nice the September magazines.
Especialy page 31, that's all wrong!
nr.7 is a belt. A comparable pair of pants of "Liefs van Bo" is slightly more expensive.
Only nr.2 and 8 are correct.
How're things for the rest of the magazine?

To which Wehkamp (Dennis Hendriksen) responded:

Firstly, thank you for your response. It's indeed true that two article numbers were switched in the magazine (namely: nr. 6 and 7, page 31). De error has our attention. Internally we'll be looking for a solution to guarantee the ease of ordering.

Kind regards,
Dennis Hendriksen
Wehkamp.nl

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands are experiencing a brand coming out: they’re becoming an ultimate cooperation form between people. You’ve got people in the core, who work on it all day, people who do something some of the time (call it ‘part-time working’ for now), people who sometimes think along and people who spend most of their lives simply taking.

Sending a press release is part of PR, part of Public Relations, part of maintaining relationships with the public. In practice that always means: keeping in contact with the press. Entering the dialogue. And that can be seen beautifully here.

In a next step, by the by, people need to be logged in so that Wehkamp.nl (in this case) can see directly which delivery it’s about and take personal action, like calling. Perhaps this person would be willing to proofread next time. And so we’re going forward step by slow step.

Engineers of the George Washington University have succeeded in using nanoscale fabricating techniques to create a flexible contact lens with a biologically safe electronic circuit and light source. This means the lens can be worn, like a regular lens, on the eye. Furthermore, it's capable of relaying information to the human eye which the eye otherwise wouldn't pass onto the brain.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

More and more screens which give us sight on the visual world are being created. It’ll be projected into our lenses how we have to walk, in our ear we’ll hear data about the person we’re speaking to, see things that aren’t really there. And all of that in 3D. We’ll have to wait a while for this technology, but eventually it’ll be the most normal thing in the world.

Related trends

• More 3D

Eduhub is a new Dutch comparison site which compares educational courses for private schools. At its start the site contained 265 providers of unsubsidized training courses. The commercial initiatives of universities/colleges also fall under this. Over a hundred of these have a log-in code which allows them to enter the courses they offer manually. Currently, this results in an overview of 3,200 courses. Mentioning courses is free, but providers have to pay if they also want to receive leads. In concrete terms that means people's requests for brochures. Eduhub earns €5 if someone requests a brochure for a €500 course and €50 for one of €5000. It's a fixed percentage, no matter what the popularity of the sections or specific courses.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Career coaching brands guide us with our personal development. Which books should we read? Which events should we go to? Which blogs should we follow? Which job should I choose? What suits me anyway? What makes me happy? How do I get the best out of myself? With the creation of this type of brad it’s important to first chart the available offer, worldwide, in great detail. Eduhub has made a start and can grow into a career coaching brand.

Next steps are then: Which education should I choose now? Which course suits which job? Which courses are most suited for my way of learning? Options aplenty.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

People who want to lose weight would benefit from keeping a diary in which they also photograph the food they're eating. Research by Lydia Zepeda en David Deal (University of Wisconsin-Madison) shows that a confrontation with photographs works better than a regular diary. On top of that it also works preventively. The quantity of food is, in contrast to in a written book, judged before hand which forces one to think. There have been examples of participants who no longer ate crisps or candy because it was too confronting to photograph these beforehand.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

A comparable technique from hypnosis is writing down what you feel before you start eating, then you’re allowed to eat anything afterwards. When you’re aware of being frustrated and have earned a cookie for it, you almost won’t want the cookie anymore.

With this technique it’s a combination of the two. People think in images and not in text, so it’s not surprising that this works better. It’ll be even better when people put it on video. Just tell the camera why you’re eating that. In the step that follows we’ll have real-time contact with our health coaching brand. Then we’ll get 24/7 feedback on our eating habits. Hear immediately what the impact on our body is if we eat at that moment. Then losing weight will be a completely different story.

Erwin van Lun's Mensmerk.nl is now ranked number 6 in the top 100 of Dutch Marketing and Communications Blogs, the Marcom Top 100. It's not a goal in itself, but it's nice to know the site is appreciated so much. You're always welcome to vote. And in the meantime I'm working on the successor of version 1.5 (Dutch) of this site, namely 2.0, with far more links between trends and predictions which are to be expected from a futurist.

Independer.nl, a Dutch price comparison site for complex services, has launched a blog. Starting today consumers, journalists, colleagues and other critics can give their (blunt) opinion of Independer.nl. The blog is also meant to make the vision and ideas of Independer.nl easily accessible to all those interested. All content in the form of newsletters, press releases and surveys produced by Independer.nl will be available on the blog. People will also be able to respond to all content. In this way Independer.nl hopes to contribute further to its transparency.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

And so every brand will start to operate completely transparently. Each press release will become a normal message. Each message can be responded to. Earlier Independer.nl has already responded extensively on reactions based on my posting on Molblog: Independer advises insurance companies (Dutch), for example, about the provisions that Independer.nl receives, or the discussion with a potential ex-employee. The size of the public, however, is limited to the public there and, given the large target group Independer.nl wants to reach, it’s far more logical for Independer.nl to offer transparency in its own environment.

This is how all brands are experiencing a brand coming out and furnish their environment in such a way that people feel comfortable in it. This is a nice example.

Related trends

• Brand coming out
• Brand worlds

Eye laser clinic VisionClinics (Dutch) uses a lot of images to explain its product. On a special part of the site potential clients can watch with others. Like this they'll see a few short videos regarding motivation, preparation, the treatment and the results. There are also a lot of photo material and text explanations available.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Human eyes are created to perceive images. Now that we’re given more and more opportunities to do this images will become the leading communication form. Currently relatively passively; we can look and click. Soon that image will react to us and we’ll get on-screen explanations to our questions: ‘how does such an eye operation work?’ and the movie starts. And if we want we can look at it from a completely different angle. Slowly, very slowly, text will disappear to the background and will make, through flat screens, space for 3D images. Soon only people who like to read will be doing this. 95% will be content with just images (and sound).

Related trends

• More 3D

On programmagemist.nl (Dutch), television broadcaster SBS (Dutch) doesn't show just the videocontent of its own broadcasting channels NET 5, SBS 6 and Veronica, but also of the Dutch public broadcasting channels and of the Dutch RTL. Beyond that ProgrammaGemist (MissedProgram) also has its own hyve, a page on Facebook, on YouTube and on Twitter.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

With the creation of home entertainment coaching brands, brands that entertain us after a day of hard work, it’s about completeness in the first instance: make sure you’ve access to everything. That step’s being taken here (in a limited capacity, but the intention is there). Then it’ll become an art to tailor the evening. What trusted relations (friends, family and colleagues) watched/did is of the utmost importance. With this too SBS is taking a cautious step. Slowly, very slowly, we’re discovering the models of the future together.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

With Kupuk it's possible to control your music system using your iPhone. This is because it creates a link between phones and music systems that could turn out to become very popular.
A Sonos music system (Dutch) is a special audio system that fills the missing link between files on the hard drive, internet radio and the speakers in the various rooms of the house. The core of the system is comprised of one or more 'zone players' which are wirelessly connected to one another. Then you can control each zone with a so-called 'controller. (I've such a system myself and it works great!) Now it's also possible to control the whole system with a 'normal' iPhone.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

All screens will be connected to one another and give you access to all information wherever you want it. In this case, for example, you turn your music on using the computer, turn up the volume with your controller and will turn it off with your iPhone when you walk out the door. And that’s only the beginning. Soon we’ll also be able to use the TV, mirrors or e-readers to control our music: each screen is connected to the virtual world and reacts to our finger movements. After that we only have to say which music we want to hear and after that the digital troubadour will feel exactly what we want. This is a step in that direction.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

Chinese researchers have made a breakthrough in artificial photosynthesis. With the aid of carbon nanotubes (falls under nanotechnology) they can reproduce an important part of photosynthesis that was hitherto not possible.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Most important about this development is that devices will start to disconnect from their power supply. At the moment we need electric cables everywhere. This means that cars recharge themselves in sunlight; this means that computers can be outside; that robots can recharge in the garden. For humans that means an enormous increase in our freedom and furthermore we’re relieved from the slumbering concern of energy supplies, something that will help especially the underdeveloped countries to reach ‘western’ levels.

Related trends

• 2025-2050: Roboworld
• More freedom

Home shopping company Wehkamp sends an email to online shoppers who've put things in their shopping cart, but haven't finished the payment. In the email the products in the cart are brought to the consumer's attention again. The amount of leads with this email is almost four times as high as with conventional emails. With this case Wehkamp was given the silver EMMA Award, an email marketing award.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands get how to shape the automated dialogue more and more. In fact this is automating attention: pay attention to what someone’s doing. ‘Hey, you thought this was interesting, can I help you with it?’ The most normal thing in the world, but you do have to do it first. Wehkamp gets precisely how this works.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

On Stormpulse it's possible to track hurricanes. It's possible to see the current situation, access all sorts of data, go back in time, find comparable hurricanes or look at photos.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’re mapping the physical world into the greatest possible detail. Now, in the past and in the predicted future. In that world we can go wherever we want to go and interact with brands like it’s the most normal thing on earth. The creation of this world is seen in examples like this.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

Customers of 3dfoot.com can let their feet be scanned in stores. The data will be saved online. When you then come into the online store, you can call on your profile and try the shoes on virtually.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Fashion coaching brands advise you on the buying and maintenance of clothing. They do have to know everything about you. The form of your feet, your legs, your body. Which colors suit you, how you walk, how you move. And especially what your friends like. And what you’ll be doing. This is a first, but useful, step in the development of this type of brand.

Related trends

• More 3D

Seatwave (Dutch), is taking over the Dutch site Skelper. Seatwave is, according to themselves, the biggest ticket service site in Europe where consumers can sell tickets for events.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In the past we’ve devised country borders for our own safety. Within these borders economies have been able to grow on the basis of physical goods and services. The coming decade most innovations will be made in the virtual world. This world, per definition, knows no borders. New companies such as this one, but also for example social networks, start in their own country (optimalized for language, local law or combination with local massmedia), but after a couple of years it’ll become clear that you’re doing things double in different countries: there are a lot of differences, but especially also a lot of similarities. Then the consolidation strike follows. This is happening extensively in Europe right now and the worldwide expansions will be the inevitable next step in a year or 5-10.

Related trends

• De-nationalizing