Trend observations, analysis and future predictions since 2005
Category: Brand Evolution
The world is changing, and brands adapt. Even the concept of brands themselves is changing. This is extensively described in the book. Until August 2006 this category was the main focus of this web log. Tangible, visual changes of brands are discussed here.
City of Ely Community College recognises students’ faces
Sixth-formers now have their faces scanned as they arrive in the morning at the City of Ely Community College. Face Register register students in and out of school in just 1.5 seconds. The technology works by scanning faces with an infra-red light and matching their image with key facial features stored on a secure system. Not only a hit with the students, who enjoy signing themselves in, the system is saving a member of staff about an hour and a half each day in recording data.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
Brands will automate their conversations and recognising people is a key element. It will not only attribute emotions to brands, it will also decrease cost. This is a beautiful example.
Related trends
LegacyLocker notifies your friends after you died
Legacy Locker notifies friends (in online worlds) of your death. When you're still alive, you create a secure environment where you can store all your passwords. When something has happened, Legacy Locker will require a copy of your death certificate before releasing information. Surviving relatives then get access to your mail accounts, online services you used and your online friends. The service costs $30 per year.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
Whether we’re talking about our identity in the virtual world or in the physical world: in the mind of people it’s all the same. Whenever someone disappears, they’ll be missed. And to miss someone is a negative emotion. To address this emotion, new companies will step into this market. And this is just the first step.
Social networks will soon integrate this functionality. In the next step, they will first make sure that each individual profile is checked with a birth certificate (or authorisation by the country of the individual’s nationality) to make sure each profile really represents one single individual. As soon as someone claims that someone is dead, it has already been in the national administration, so it can be acknowledged immediately and death can be communicated by their relatives. The social network will offer services to help those who are left behind to handle their emotions. That will be much more important than just informing them.
That’s how social networks evolve into social coaching brands.
Related trends
IRLConnect plots Facebook and Twitter on Google Map
IRLconnect connects to your friend profiles on Facebook and Twitter and plots them on a (Google) map. This visualizes not only what your friends are doing but also where they are doing that. Op top, you can change your status for all platforms instanteneously. IRL Connect is private beta. However, you could use the invitekey which is at the bottom of this posting on one of my favorite Dutch websites DutchCowboys.
Related trends
Me2Everyone shares stocks
The new virtual world Me2Everyone is giving stock shares to participants. Every new member (currently) receives 250 stock shares in the phenomena. The first 100,000 members received 1000! Beyond that the 'tell-a-friend'-principle does the rest, seeing how every introduced member gives an additional 500 shares (it used to be 3000). Currently there are 18 billion shares ready for enthusiastic virtual people, so you have some time yet. But don't hesitate for too long. The first 250,000 showed up in three months' time. In 2013, it's supposed to be the best-visited site in the world, the company will go to the London stock market and there should be 100 million active players.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
Only when the concerns of the customer falls together with the owner of a company can you do beautiful things. Stock markets as we know them now will disappear and make place for concepts like this.
Related trends
Joost available through Netlog
Videosite Joost is unlocking its content through social network Netlog. With this users are given the ability to watch movies, tv shows or music videos directly from their profile. Furthermore, they can share videos with their friends and offer comments on clips using the already existing features of Netlog. In the Benelux Netlog users are given a varied assortment, including the Dutch versions.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
Movies, music, books: they’re just experiences humans like to share with others, Later we can just watch a movie, on any screen, anywhere in the world, in any language and we’ll give feedback with our emotions. We won’t need to write we thought it was great anymore. Our social coaching brand could see that without it, and we can share them with our friends, anywhere in the world, no matter what language they speak. This is a step in that direction.
Related trends
MijnAlbum.nl on Wii, Playstation 3, iPhone and TV
Dutch online photo service MijnAlbum has made it possible to view and share images placed on the website using the Wii, Playstation 3 and iPhone. Furthermore photos from the albums are unlocked for the tv in cooperation with Philips Net TV. Net TV is the new functionality of Philips' high-end tvs with which people can use their tv to check the latest news online, look at weather predictions or share their photos.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
All brands will be found on all possible screens. From great to small, bendable, 3D, word on the nose or not, with stereo of very minimally. MijnAlbum takes the lead.
Amazon in secondhand games
Using TradeIn, Amazon's newest service, consumers can send in their own games (for example those for the Xbox, Playstation and Wii) and get a voucher in exchange. Amazon then sells the games on its website.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
All retailers will deal in second-hand. See, it’s not about selling new goods, but about helping a consumer with a good. If they consumer wants something new that’s possible, but so is second-hand. That used to be impossible to organize in physical stores, but now we can.
By the by, it’ll be over with games on discs very soon. We’ll download everything through optical fibre, personalized worlds around us, and pay per minute or in subscription models. But that to the side.
Legal Download asks 99 dollar for hitlist notation
Dutch download site legaldownload.nl sells music of relatively unknown artists. They can upload their music in MP3-format for free. Radio broadcasters can delve into the database for their programmes for free and generate extra airplay. There's no hassle with rights. Third parties can then open a shop to sell the music. All downloads count towards the hit lists in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. For the last an artist pays 99 euro a year.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
This is how increasingly simpler models to sell music are created. Eventually music will be dirt cheap, sometimes even free, and artists will make money from concert tickets sold by music coaching brands. First we have to get rid of the old models and this is a step in that direction.
Wehkamp lets Dyanne Beekman give style advice
Wehkamp lets image stylist Dyanne Beekman, known from various Dutch tv shows and the DYANNE collections give advice. Based on nine questions regarding hair colour, hairdo, skin tone, eye color, figure type, length, weight, style group and size Dyanne puts together a personal style advice and shows which clothing the customer is best off wearing. Every six weeks wehkamp.nl shows a new collection and with every new collection the customer can count on new advice by Dyanne.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
This is how brand advice becomes increasingly more personal. Later on we’ll stand in front of the webcam in our underwear (or naked) and our body will be measured immediately. At first we’ll have to show a marker with a set length so that the length can be measured too, but that’ll be automatic too in time. We’ll also get a better insight in our skin colour, the exact shape of our face or the proportions of the limbs and the trunk. And the advice will be a lot better then. This is another step in that direction.
Related trends
Facebook gives people a say in privacy rights
CEO Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook indicates on his blog that users will get a say in the 'terms of service', a say in privacy and the sharing of data.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
Everything is about ‘together’. Currently for Facebook, but later this’ll go for every brand.
And where privacy is concerned it’ll be really simple: users will get full control. They get to decide who gets access to which data when and for how long. And with ‘who’ I mean other brands too. So that you can trust certain brands to use certain personal data permanently. Like your address. In my book I already gave a slew of examples of this (so I’ve already given them in 2005; later more on the evaluation of my predictions).
Related trends
9292 contest
The Dutch public transport travel planner 9292 is organizing a contest that challenges students to create the ultimate public transport (web) application. They get access to a special server that sends them XML-code which they can use to connect their application to the public transport databases. They can win 1500, 750 or 500 euro.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
All companies will open their databases. First they were the web 2.0 companies, but now also traditional companies with a lot of technology, later you’ll get insight in every detail and into every company. That’s called transparent working in the network economy. And that process of change is called the brand coming out. A nice example.
Related trends
NGIZ adds animation to donor form
This March, NIGZ-Donorvoorlichting will start a recruitment campaign (for organ donation) under all 18-year-old Dutch people. Beside a letter to the home address the webcam is central to this campaign. All youths born in 1990 will receive a donor form and a pamphlet at home in mid-March.
Both the pamphlet and the form have a spectacular 3D animation. This animation will come to life if the form or the pamphlet is held in front of the webcam. That makes the NIGZ-Donorvoorlichting one of the first parties to use web based augmented reality, or combining the real world with virtual data.
A preview of the campaign can already be seen on www.donorformulier.nl. Click on through to the webcam part and an ActiveX-application will appear. The installation will take about 10 seconds.
Then the webcam will be recognized. When the webcam is activated the donor form and the pamphlet can be shown to the webcam. The 3D animation will then start on its own. When the form is taken out of the webcam's sight the effect will disappear.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
Brands will bring to life anything they can produce physically. Not just products, but flyers, forms and their products. This is a nice example.
Related trends
75% Mini-owners part of a community
75% of the owners of a Mini living in the US are members of a Mini-community. Not only do most members of the community stay loyal to the brand and buy another Mini, but it’s claimed that about half of all sales leads are actually generated by the site.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
Brands are increasingly becoming an open network of people where the division between employee and consumer will fade entirely. This is a nice example. Currently 75% is a member of the community, later you’ll standardly be a member when you buy a Mini (new or second-hand) and you determine your activity level. Then you can save customers’ individual transactions and, if wanted, show them, so that you get ‘my Minis’. You can add a picture to it and it’ll be a whole party. Brands with a symbolic function can do this kind of thing, and successfully so it seems.
Related trends
Kiva for transparent microcredits
Through Kiva you can lend money to an entrepreneur (in a developing country) directly. With your loan you allow people to lift their lives above the poverty line. You choose an entrepreneur, pay a maximum of 25 euros (by credit card or Paypal) and you get your money back without 6 to 12 months. All investments are shown orderly and you get updates via email.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
Kiva is just a new-style bank. Borrowing/Lending money, saving money, entrepreneurship. It’s all about mutual trust. Later on another social layer will be on top of this: you can build a reputation as an entrepreneur. Have you borrowed successfully before? Are you recommended by others who borrowed successfully before (that’s an indication this person might be trustworthy too), do you come from a family which has successfully started a business? Or has the borrower contacts who’ve borrowed from you before? It all adds up. And they’re undoubtedly the next steps which organizations of Kiva are working on.
Related trends
Triodos shows investments on map
Dutch bank Triodos Bank lets you see exactly which companies are financed by Triodos Bank and where the interest on your savings comes from. You can also see which local entrepreneurs in your area are supported by your money. You can see the map on the site Mijn geld gaat goed.
Future vision by Erwin van Lun
With banking it’s all about trust. Where trust used to come from stock notation and visibility that’s now going to come from transparency. Later on you’ll be able to decide where you want to invest or not. Or you can think along with an entrepreneur you’ve invested in. Or you get a signal when you walk past a project you’ve contributed to. That’s a very different dynamic from the banks which are now wobbling (and will crash).