The Australian University of Melbourne has developed a prototype under the name 'Jogging over Distance', in which two people who jog separately can yet hear each other at the distance they would be if they were jogging together. 3D audio simulation is used to make it seem like the slower jogger is really behind you, or the quicker jogger is in front of you. This could be very stimulating (tx). We imitate the physical world as good as we can so that we can experience anything we like at any place on earth. Alone, or with other people. This is an example of things really going in that direction.

The New York Times has published its enormous article archives. All pages with good titles, descriptions and a perfect internal linking structure. Brands are becoming more and more open. It's no longer about information (something which is more and more often easily available to everyone); there is no more lack of information and with that the economical value of information has disappeared. It's more and more often about the selection of information (and products, services, experiences) tailored to the individual. That's the field of coaching brands. In this way the New York Times can grow into a news coaching brand.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

MSNBC.com, the American news brand, introduced a pre-movie video game in which the audience directly interacts with the screen while live news is incorporated. It was a kind of arcade game consisting of a screen of little bars and a ball that can shoot the bars. The bars were filled with live news from msnbc.com while the ball was controlled by the collective actions of the audience. If people generally moved to the right more, the ball went to the right as well (bx) This way the media start to react to us. In the future we will see people in the theater live projected in the movie, or we see avatars in it that are not physically present, and we start carrying out orders in the city, where we meet audiences of other movie theaters. The movie then is only a side issue. And brands can offer this kind of content. We will call these 'branded experiences'. See the video clip.

About.com, part of The New York Times Company, buys American review site ConsumerSearch.com, a review site for 250 product categories. The take-over of ConsumerSearch.com is the third in a short time frame. Earlier About.com already took over uCompareHealthcare.com and CalorieCounter.com (em). This way About lays the foundation for coaching brands. By regrouping the brands around themes like health, home or transport, and introducing new brands for these, a logical place arises for consumers to find anything they are looking for. Dialogues can be started, and brand relationships will come into being. For example, once you have entered your weight, sex and age, all kinds of questions about health can be answered in a personal context, and issues can be taken care of quickly. About.com can develop a couple of very strong coaching brands. An interesting starting point.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Telecomvergelijker.nl, the biggest comparison site of telecommunication products in the Netherlands, will indicate how and by whom they are financed (mc, Dutch). Brands become more and more open and transparent. This is an example.

Dutch housing site Jaap.nl claims to show a bigger number of houses than Funda, the established brand in this area. Personal-brands-to-be now mainly focus on being complete. First in the Netherlands, then in surrounding countries and finally in all countries in the world. Relying on this completeness, the consumer can be served best, and value be added. This way Jaap can develop into a home coaching brand.This is a small step in that direction.

Social music platform Last.FM's users can now also watch music videos. Recording companies, among others EMI and Warner, will make about two thousand clips available online. And the amount will grow quickly, according to Last.fm. Their final goal is to have all music videos online that have ever been made (em, Dutch). This way music coaching brands gradually take shape. These brands give us auditive entertainment, and can show us the matching video if we wish. Or the song texts, the karaoke version, or the versions of the various instruments. And that for all music that has ever been made. This is a small step in that direction.

At Singapore Airport you can find some interactive shop-windows. When touching the window, a 'globe of films' is projected. You can control it by touching the window again. The globe can turn in any direction, and by touching one of the films on the globe, a video is started on a plasma TV next to it. (fc). This way the shop-window becomes more and more interactive, and our experiences become more intense. This is a simple but effective way to do that.

French company T-Immersion has developed a technology to add 3D objects to live video streams. (fc). In this picture the newspaper is photographed, then the video starts playing, and 3D avatars interact with the newspaper. And the video shows more. The virtual world becomes a screen over the real world. In a while, we will walk over the Colosseum in Rome, point our camera, and have a movie replayed in our glasses, our hand phone of any other possible display, exactly from the position we're in at that moment. Thus a completely new dimension evolves.

Related trends

• More 3D

Financial auction site Zopa brings together money lenders and borrowers. A borrower states the conditions for a loan, and if these compare to offers of lenders, the deal can be made. The risk is spread by dividing the total amount of money into smaller amounts, provided by several lenders. The credit scores of people who are borrowing money are thoroughly checked (dc, Dutch). Here banking 1.1 comes into being. It is he existing principle of a bank, as Zopa has to make money too. Using IT to make a new start, processes can be reinvented, or even be deleted if necessary. This way situation can arise that is comparable to what Easyjet has done in air transport. Zopa can grow into a transaction brand, with a price fighter position in the savings and loan markets. In the end financial coaching brands will advice us on what we should do with whom (what transaction brand), under what conditions. And they will take care of that for us. That will be the added value of the financial coaching brand, and that is where their margins will be. That is banking 2.0. The development of this kind of transaction brands contributes to that.

Dag is a new news brand in the Netherlands. The media consider it the fourth free newspaper in the Netherlands, however the organization rightly announced it as a cross-medium news brand. And it has the ambition to grow into a news coaching brand, a brand that stands next to you and follows the changes in society with you. And if you see something yourself, Dag happily listens to you. In the navigation they have a tag 'participate', you can rate every item, and give your reaction on everything. Later we will be able to ask Dag in a spoken dialogue (in the car, in the shower, or at the railway station in Cape Town): "Is there any news?" Then we will get, in text, image or sound (whichever we prefer), the latest news since the last time we asked that question. This is a small step in that direction.

On the internet, the latest KNVB cup final soccer could be watched through four camera positions: Player Cam, Top Cam, Goal Cam, and the Directors Cut. The latter showed the edited images of the regular tv signal: for tv, the game was registered by 26 cameras (em, Dutch). We completely imitate the physical world in the virtual world. Real time, live! At the moment we are still limited to fixed cameras; later we will be able to get any image we want from all cameras, including those of fans in the stadium, real time. We then kind of fly through the stadium with our own camera. Or we fly with somebody else who knows what to pay attention to (with a director or a directing consumer). At this moment, in replay through the last minute or through a game played ten years ago. It gets more and more real. This is a small step in that direction.

The SamenWoonScan (Dutch) van de Postbank (Dutch) helps you organize your finances when you start to live together. After entering information such as your old and new living situation, monthly and yearly incomes, current primary bank and ongoing insurances, pensions and loans you're given an overview of what you should be thinking of. As such you get advice on fiscal partnership, dividing regular costs, a 'living together' contract and setting up a will. You also get matching offers from the Postbank. Brands are starting to think along more and more.
Postbank can grow into a financial coaching brand, a brand that strives for a long-term relationship and coaches within its financial area of expertise. As a trusted partner, Postbank will soon also start to sell (all) products of third parties, compare them for you, make the best choice together with you and take care of the transaction. Then the advice will be truly credible and relevant. However, changes don't happen overnight, but step by step. This is a step in that direction.

LaatJeLeiden, a Dutch student site, has animated its logo. Brands will animate their logo more and more often. To exhibit brand personality, to broadcast a message, or just to create additional attention to stay in the visitor's memory longer. Animating the logo simply wasn't done in a time where you only had a few seconds to show it. Young people, not yet burdened by thoughts from the mass communication era, show that you can do much more with a logo. It won't be long before we can also interact with the brand. Will all traditional brands too. This is a step in that direction!

TNO, a Dutch research institute, now includes a link to an email disclaimer in its personal email traffic. This is instead of the usual complete disclaimer. Brands are entering the dialogue with consumers, with people. Just like normal mutual (for example) telephonic contact we don't agree to a disclaimer beforehand. The attention of this kind of messages are currently still disrupting the communication, but this is a step better. In a next step TNO will set down the disclaimer at a notary and create a link 'sent under TNO conditions 1.01' with a link to the notary. In a next step in which authentication in email will be organized (worldwide) extremely well a disclaimer won't even be needed and we can just trust the sender implicitly. And then messages can become interesting again, open a virtual world for us, without having agree to something 15 times. It'll all take a while, but it's coming.

Communicatie Online (Communication Online; Dutch), the site of the monthly magazine for communication specialists, has now been integrated with its sister blog Commlog (Dutch). The headers 'news' and 'opinion' (the old blog part) are now fraternally below one another. It's possible to react to all articles. This is how magazine brands are slowly giving the reins to their community (the readers). At first they'll become passive purchasers, now they're active contributors, soon they'll decide which item should be treated in the magazine. Communicatie can then grow into a brand that facilitates a trade association in their career developments. In affiliate programs, it can recommend courses, (all) books and congresses. And even new jobs. Internationally too. And this is how Communicatie can grow into a true career coaching brand.