My Health Coach for Nintendo DS combines a virtual, personal fitness trainer and a professional nutritionist. Your movements are measured by a pedometer. You connect it to your Nintendo DS and keep track of your daily movements. You create your own profile based on age, weight, length, body movement, etc. Based on your BMI and lifestyle a personal program is put together for you.
Then you fill in your own goal which ten training sessions help you reach. Based on this data the program also supplies tips for a balanced diet.
To read your goal, you only need to play 10-15 minutes a day and to keep the game fun you can set yourself challenges. For example: 'don't use elevators or escalators all day long' or 'sit in the Lotus-position for 15 minutes' or 'eat two bowls of vegetable soup', etc. The result of the exercises and eating habits are converted to graphs. This allows you to see whether your lifestyle has really changed after a few weeks or months.
My Health Coach has a one time fee of €39,99.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Now all we need to do is connect and synchronise everything. Soon you’ll hear directly in your ear piece which movements are good for you right at that moment. Get up! Health brands are with you all day long, and, dosed, know exactly the right way to coach you.

LinkedIn, a business social network, is integrating people's reading lists. For each book you can indicate 'I want to read it', 'I'm reading it now' and 'I want to read it'. You can also indicate whether you're using the Kindle, Amazon's e-paper device.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In a next step you’ll connect your Amazon account to the LinkedIn account. Then the books you’ve purchased will appear automatically. When you indicate that you’ve read it, Amazon will ask for your review, which will then appear on Amazon.com and, more importantly, will be shown prominently to your business partners. This allows LinkedIn to help you more with books that help develop your career. This is a step in that direction.

Using M&M Custom Print you can now make your own M&M's. You can choose from 22 colours, add text and even print photos.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’re leaving the standard product ever further behind. Now that the media allows brands to listen to the customer again (like they did before the mass production era) the marketing P of Product will also be personal again. This is an example of this.

The 62,500 readers of the Dutch digital magazine Goede Tijden have a chance of hearing their own ringtone composition in Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden. Readers are given all creative freedom: they can compose, sing, rap or mix. All submitted ringtones are immediately shown in the GTST mobile shop. A top 10 will be compiled from the most popular ringtones and a professional jury will eventually choose the winning ringtone. The ringtone itself will then be heard in the popular Dutch soap series Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Television series are like games with real actors in them. Who looks at it like this just sees a co-creation production. Soon we’ll be able to design are own worlds, houses, furniture, cars while the actors walk around in them. And if they open a chest of drawers it’ll turn out that we’re in there. Or a new game will start. It’s all running through one another. Ever more fun. Ever more creative.

Related trends

• Experiences

Go-Tan, manufacturer of Eastern food products, has supplied the bottles of Wok Essentials found in supermarkets with a hanger with a QR (Quick Response) code. With a cell phone the QR code (a 2d barcode) can be scanned. Then your cell will display a webpage with a recipe and the matching shopping list. Go-Tan claims to be the first to use QR codes like this in Dutch supermarkets.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Products are losing their anonymity. In times past the baker knew exactly what bread he sold you. After that we had a period in which producer (the brand), consumer and the individual product knew an anonymous existence. Now we’re seeing the return of the dialogue with the product as focus of the conversation. Go-Tan is given a wealth of information just from measuring the moment the question is asked. In a next step a mobile application will start that explains us how to make the recipe in images and sounds. And then we can ask another question (‘can I use brown sugar instead of regular sugar?’) and we’ll be given an answer immediately. This is a step in that direction.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

MyHeritage, of of the world's most popular genealogy websites, is now available in nine additional languages. The new languages are Danish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Malaysian, Arabic and Persian. MyHeritage is helping over 26 million people in the world to stay in touch with one another and helps families research their history in a fun and easy way.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The biggest brands of the coming century operate world-wide per definition, but speak exactly the language of the consumer. Currently as just the national language, but later as exactly the language that each individual customer uses. So that they feel most understood. Using the local language is a good start for this.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

PSA Holland, the association of professional speakers in the Netherlands and Belgium, shows a testimonial of each speaker with the reason why the author thinks other speakers should be a member of the union. Each member has a special field for this on their account page. The home page and each deeper page show an example of the testimonials entered there. Giving a commitment to a brand in such a way and broadcasting it like this is something I've never seen before. An example every brand should follow.

Each member chooses their own style. For example, Chris van Vleuten says:

Speaking is a trade skill and a trade can be taught. To learn you need teachers and good examples. Both of these can be found in the PSA Holland. The most important thing to be found in the PSA Holland as trade union: inspiration and involvement!

Chris takes an energetic angle; other speakers may choose a different one.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

All brands, whether you’re called Google, Wehkamp, Xbox, Mexx, Albert Heijn, MarketingFacts or Postbank, can implement this tomorrow and expand step-by-step. Each brand that has a log-in function already has a basis. As soon as you know a little more about the customer you can make testimonials more specific immediately: ‘people from your home town, your gender (call it something else, of course), of your age say x about our brand’. And if you’re really smart: friends say. The Facebook application Beacon gave the first push in that direction (see here).

Controlling this will be the big challenge for large brands. What will people say about my brand? Does it fit our position? I won’t describe it here in detail, but the time of this thinking is slowly but steadily ending. Nevertheless we’re still dealing with the old thinking which is still deeply rooted in companies, governments and NGOs. By the by it’ll get even more exciting when you can react to testimonials. Or when people change their opinions after many years of fidelity. Perhaps you’ll need to make a change log for testimonials. And if you link that up with your CRM database, the party’s complete. Openness, openness, openness, that’s what it’s about in brands new style. Enough to do in this fun time.
I’m curious who’s next.

Related trends

• Brand coming out

Using Mcast.fm (Dutch) you can listen to internet audio in the train, car or on your bicycle through your regular (mobile) phone. This allows you to listen to programs that interest you. For example to background information for the financial crisis, technology or the environment in the world. By calling +31 (0)30 711 5670 or +32 (0)808 0159 the user is dropped right into the news. By pressing 6 the item can be skipped and the next one will start. You can go back 30 seconds with 1, pause with 2 and go back to the beginning with 4.

Anyone who registers on the site will immediately receive a text message with the request to save the number on the cell phone. Then you can make a playlist based on your area of interest (so not on loose items) on the website. Downloading and synchronizing podcasts or audio files is, as such, unneeded.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how news coaching brands are slowly brought to live. Soon we’ll make a car phone call to ‘Momi’. Momi appears and greets us, we ask ‘is there any news?’ and Momi begins. Based on our reaction (whether we say ‘d’oh’ or ‘continue’ or ‘tell me more’) we get the news on our profile, but above all our profile will become ever sharper. This is how Momi can become our new buddy: the brand that keeps us up-to-date. And if Momi also has a nice image to go with it, we can say ‘save that for when I get home’ where the dialogue will happily continue through, for example, the television. This is a clear step in that direction.

President-Elect Barack Obama of the US launched a new website last Thursday. On change.gov visitors can make suggestions for the new American government. "The story of the campaign and this historic moment has been your story," the website says. "Tell us your story and the issues that matter most to you. Share with us your concerns and hopes. – the policies you want to see carried out in the next four years." Users can also use the website to send in an open application for a job with the American government. There's a blog, an upcoming event (Obama's inauguration on January 20th) and the agenda is explained. Further more people can leave their email address and zip code for a newsletter.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This shows how the world is changing fundamentally. A beautiful example of how organizations, whether they’re NGOs, governments or commercial brands are becoming more open. In this case Obama also takes a next step: he really wants people’s input. How he’s going to organize all that input time will tell. Perhaps he’ll moderate the ideas (without removing what he chooses), group them and send concrete questions to the people together with volunteers or paid help. This way, in the long term, he can use the site to gauge people’s opinions. And if he does something with them (he’ll have to), you can take this ‘gauging’ as ‘voting’.

And if Obama takes it another step further he can call for people to do something. Not just listen to what he’s supposed to do (he just makes decisions anyway), but facilitate what others will do. That means a change in democracy.

Well done, Obama! My compliments.

Related trends

• Brand coming out

Augmented reality, the mixing of the virtual world and the physical world, is becoming increasingly more simple. Who prints out a PDF A4 on strafwerk.nu (Dutch) and allows the program to watch through the webcam will see a BMW appearing on their desk. It's astonishingly simple.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The essence of this innovation is the simplicity. Augmented reality gives brands the ability to show animations of products the moment a screen is near. However, before the masses start to use this (and brands get on with real innovative applications), all hurdles have to be taken away first. Software installation is an example of such a hurdle. And that works fine here.

Now it’s waiting for the first iPhone application. Then brands will follow quickly.

From 4 November onwards readers of Totaal TV (Dutch programming guide of Veronica Publishing) enrich their TV guide with 3D objects or videos. Readers hold their TV guide in front of the webcam of their own computer. On screen, the images turn into videos or become visible in 3D. Augmented Reality adds 3D-objects and videos to live images. Readers who hold up an article on Ilse DeLange will see the article reflected on the screen (like a mirror as it were). Something is added, however. In this image a picture from the article will turn into a video of the 'making of' of the new album 'Incredible'. TouchingMedia (Dutch) claims a world scoop with this innovation.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how paper is given an added dimension. But not just paper, soon we can get an automatic demonstration with everything we see and which stands still. If a car passes and we take a picture? The car manufacturer ensures a fitting personalized animation. We see someone on the street? We’ll see all kinds of movies with this person in action. In live action (as reflection of the real past) or as animation. See an animal? We’ll be handed documentaries immediately. See a tool and we’re shown animations on how to use it. And if we still don’t get it, we ask. This is how brands and consumers can enter a dialogue with the product as subject. In this case, Totaal TV enters the dialogue regarding the magazine, but a third, namely Ilse DeLande, can easily mingle into the conversation. This is how the virtual world is starting to be a little more like the normal world. And with that it also becomes more understandable.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

Google Maps Streetview, the photographic display of the street like you're looking into it, is now also available on the iPhone. The photographic image can be seen full screen while a small version of the map appears in the bottom right corner.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Currently as old photographs with people from the photographic era. Soon all changes (new billboards, renovations), but also traffic will be adapted dynamically. Like you’re watching through a camera. Then you can get additional information with everything you see. Spoken, through your ear piece. This future is fast approaching.

You can now ask for a detailed map (Dutch) of Artis. On it you won't find just the formal street names, but also the paths around the monkey rock, the elephants and the penguins.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how we map the physical world ever better. Soon live cameras will be mounted with the names of the elephants and we can zoom in on the sound using a microphone. Inside buildings we’ll get maps too. One for each floor. And furthermore we can get virtual extensions. Stairs in the buildings like Escher could shape it so beautifully. Or walking through a building as it looked fifty years ago. In the virtual world, or in our glasses in the physical world. And with everything we see we can ask questions. With everything. Absolutely everything.

In the game Brullende Bolides (Screaming Bolides; Dutch) of the municipality of Rotterdam participants have to shout as loud as they can. The louder you shout, the faster you go. For this you use the microphone on your computer. During your screaming ride, the Coolsingel, Blaak and the Euromast fly past. This lets you discover the city in high speed. Create a hilarious sound and challenge your friends to scream an even faster time.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands start to react to us. Not just to what we type or click, but especially what we say, how we look, how we move. This is a primitive example of what’s to come.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

On ShapeWays consumers can create a 3D design and then have it produced for personal use. The material that's used is a white flexible kind of fabric that is most reminiscent of plastic. Because it uses 3D print technology, pretty much all shapes are possible. As such there are examples of vases, coasters, toy cars and hundreds of art objects. It's also possible to share the designs with others.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In the world that’s created we can look up each product that fits our needs example. Wherever it was made in the world. And if it still doesn’t meet our exact desires we can also have it custom-made. We can determine what we do ourselves. The Marketing ‘P’ for product ends up in a wholly different light. The product stays, but then exactly as that one individual consumer wants it.

Bløf, a Dutch pop group, lets its fans watch the recording of its new album 'Oktober' (October) in 3D using the Pickering Player named after The Pickering House, a mansion near Dublin, Ireland, where the new Bløf cd was recorded. The online version is a pared down 2D version in which you can watch along with the recordings from eight different camera positions. Once you've bought the CD, however, you're shown a fully 3D world.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands, what pop bands simple are, are building 3D worlds. Each brand will soon have its own 3D world that will replace the concept ‘website’ as we know it today completely. Texts will disappear to the background, only images will remain.

Soon we can sing ourselves. We can be in the virtual Pickering House ourselves. Or can have a holographic projection of the whole room into our living room. Adapted to the shape of our own home, if need be. The result can be shared with friends. Who thinks we’ve already come a long way is wrong. It’s only starting to become fun…

Related trends

• Brand worlds