Since recently, Google has a new favicon, a small icon that appears in the address bar of the browser, that's shown if you've added Google to your favorites. It seems a little clumsily designed and there's been quite some debating on the web. Now Google has invited people to contribute themselves: design the Google Favicon!

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The favicon is becoming an increasingly important element of the visual brand identity. Once a window is opened to the brand, but you’re active in a different window, often you’ll only see that site’s favicon. Furthermore the favicon is shown on many more places, like in RSS readers. And the use will only increase, for example for mobile applications for which the screens are already small and they can give you an overview of your favorite pages (brands) with their favicons.

Today the favicon is receiving relatively little attention. Too often the favicon is a shrunken version of the brand’s logo with horrific results. Because the logo isn’t designed for 16x16pixels. The earliest Google favicon was pretty strong (just the G in the typical Google colors), but maybe they deliberately chose such an ugly favicon to create some buzz.

By letting users design with them, Google increases their involvement with the brand. People feel flattered that they’re allowed to send something in at all, especially if it’s treated seriously thereafter. That person will be given eternal fame. Online-only brands like Google are at the forefront of this development.

This is how brands can involve consumers with the development of their visual brand identity. Now for something as small as the favicon, but in the long term also with other elements. Logo not excepting. The head office will facilitate rather than dictate. It’s part of the brand coming out: the decay of barriers between producer and consumer that every brand has to deal with and has to find a good mode for.

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• Brand coming out

Movie theatre chain Pathé is placing Sony Playstations in its lobby. This allows movie-goers to enjoy interactive entertainment before or after the movie as well as during the intermission.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how the experience economy emerges in a virtual world. Soon the games will be tuned to the movie you’re watching. You’ll be given assignments that are hidden in the movie or – still later – the movie will adapt to the gaming behavior in the intermission before. Or you’ll continue playing through your cell phone whilst you’re watching the ‘movie’ (what’s the difference with interactive television?) Or you’ll continue when you’re home, while you actually already started there. Experiences in a virtual world don’t limit themselves to one screen, but travel with you as you travel past different screens. This cooperation is a start.

Related trends

• Experiences

This prototype screen can be controlled from the back. With it, users can use ten fingers on a relatively small screen without seeing solely their fingers.

Many companies have a different interest than the consumer:

• pharmaceutical companies benefit from ill patients, not healthy ones. Because of this they'll be more inclined to develop medicines that are used for a long period of time than medicines that heal or, even better, medicines that prevent.


• banks benefit from many loans so that a lot of interest gets paid. Their own risk is at the forefront then.


• the producers of mobile electronics such as cameras or cell phones benefit from as many sales as possible. If something's stolen, you'll just have to buy a new device. Technically speaking, for example, telephone networks can block stolen phones, but it doesn't happen.

And so I was wondering today why no one's inventing paint that stays for thirty years. It should be possible in 2008. Now I'm not an expert on paint, but I've got the feeling that conflicting interests are part of this too.

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• Network economy

Boezoe (Dutch) searches through all Dutch webshops for used and new children's clothes. All you have to do is tell it what you're looking for and you'll see the results. Boezoe invites webshops to participate to be as complete as possible.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Completeness is what the formation of coaching brands is about in 2008: put everything in one place for me. Currently Boezoe is living off advertisements, but soon it’ll get a percentage of a sale or work with a subscription model. Boezoe won’t just be able to find anything, but it’ll also know what you’ve bought previously. If you then want to know what’s in in your child’s class and where you can get it for a nice price on top of that, Boezoe will be able to help you. It’s getting more and more personal, getting more and more added value. That’s what this evolution is about.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Asimo, Honda's humanoid robot, can now distinguish three different people shouting through one another perfectly. Asimo distinguishes (the direction of the) voices with eight microphones that have been set up in the matrix on the head and body of Asimo. Currently the three test subjects are solely shouting their name, but scientists except that Asimo will be able to handle more complex sentences and even more people in future.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

And so laboratories develop techniques, robots that can communicate more intelligently than we can. Although it will take a while before robots enter our lives, it’s easy to picture that a Nintendo Wii with a similar built-in function can detect the speech comments of different people and develop a great game around that. We can shout what we want, the noise makes everything unintelligible, but the game splits it up effortlessly.

Google has unveiled a telephone with a built-in compass. 360 degrees recordings of a location (for example seen through Google Maps) can be looked at realistically where you are. You aim for a specific point and if you turn the image will turn with you. It looks very logical.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This technology will take mobility coaching brands a step further. It’ll guide you on foot, by train, by subway, by bus, by bicycle, motor or even on an airport effortlessly from A to B. No more talk of getting lost then.

This video shows a laboratory version of Google Earth on an iPhone.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Google Earth is at this moment giving a more and more realistic image of the future. The newest iPhone (which will be for sale in the Netherlands in July) will immediately recognize the location and, based on the images of the camera, also the direction. This allows the iPhone (or any screen) to form a window to the world directly: like you’re looking through it. With the difference that you can now say: ‘what building is that to the right?’ That’s not so far away now and in a year or five consumers will be using this en masse. Exactly according to plan.

In Mentos KissCam, a crystal clear movie of candy brand Mentos, a beautiful lady emerges from the water whilst exciting music plays and she's looking for your lips. Who then activates the camera and actually shows a few lips can expect a kiss in return.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands will react to anything. They’re already reacting to what we’re clicking (call it a website), what we type (call it a chatbot), what we say (call it speech recognition), but also how we act. They’ll be able to stimulate our emotions. This is just a small example.

The Sencil of the Alfred E. Man Institute for Biomedical Engineering is a hair-thin biosensor. Its extremely sensitive tip is fastened in a blood vessel with a flexible fiberglass thread and sticks out of the skin like a normal hair. By attaching measuring devices you can, for example, measure the glucose concentration (video demonstration).

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Everywhere in our bodies we’ll build sensors which are in permanent contact with the outside world. This way brands can react to us directly. If our heart rate rises when we see a new bikini the brand will know they’re on the right track. That’s another interpretation of ‘listening to your customer’!

This is a demonstration of how a game can be controlled with brain impulses. The player here is also moving, but in principle this isn't necessary because the helmet reads his intention.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

If we can measure our intentions, we’ll also know when we’re not doing something that we’d actually like to do. That can lead to a break-through in all sorts of therapies, in coaching and in personal development. Then we’ll know how people really react to something instead of asking the question (in marketing research for example) of the cortex. If you do that you get socially desirable answers. This could make research much more trustworthy.

The animalistic robots in this video are inspired by nature.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We try to copy nature in various ways. In time this will lead to a series of minute robots in our homes. Think of microrobots that exterminate deadly spiders, fly after the wasps or kill ticks? It’s all coming.

The famous 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' opens its online encyclopedia for contributions of internet users. People have to register to place texts on the internet. The texts will then only be adaptable by the author.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands are experiencing a brand coming out. Knowledge is no longer solely for the specialists who get ever smarter in the daily service, but also for the general population. The people in the head offices are facilitating them more and more. It asks for a completely different set-up that’s hard to create for traditionally working companies. But also Encyclopaedia Britannica joins this important long term trend.

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• Brand coming out

More and more often, the Dutch consumer goes to a store's website directly instead of through search engines, 38 percent versus 34 percent. This is the result of a survey by the Raad Nederlandse Detailhandel (RND: Council Dutch Detail stores) This makes the Dutch consumer an exception in the rest of Europe.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

With this brand-thinking is grounding a little more in the virtual world. For a shopping brand not only the marketing-P ‘place’ of importance, but also an increasingly stronger P: BrainPosition. What determines after all whether a consumer enters the shop name? The maintenance of dialogue will become an important focal point in this.

Through Deezer you can listen to 2.5 million streamed songs. Downloading is no longer necessary. You can mark what you like and Deezer just starts.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Music coaching brands exist to stimulate you musically. They do this with all renditions ever made. If you want images along with it or to sing along, they’re also at your side. In the long term, they’ll project the whole band beside a dining table. It starts, however, with completeness. It’s just 2008.

KFC collects hundreds of funny, notable or bizarre ringtones that use every imaginable chicken dialect and musical beat to make the brand Kentucky Fried Chicken heard in an original way. Through a special mobile website visitors can download the KFC ringtones for free directly onto their cell phone. The person who places the most original ringtone (the ringtone that's downloaded the most in a week) will also receive a reward: an LG KF600.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how consumers will become more and more involved with a brand. In this case the brand is letting consumers play a part in the promotion of the brand. This is an example.

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• More involved