Restaurantsite Urbanspoon now has an UrbanSpoon iPhone application which recommends a random restaurant in your immediate area by shaking the iPhone. To make this possible the application uses the GPS and movement sensors that are a standard part of the iPhone. This lets you experience a sense of surprise by a random choice.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

A few developments are hidden in this.
Firstly, brands are going into a dialogue with consumers and use their eyes, ears and antennae to do this. It’s not just about what the consumer clicks, types are presses, but also what’s said, how they look and how they move. It’s all feedback in the conversation and brands are slowly learning to deal with this. It might seem like a gadget now, but soon all brands will do it.

Secondly, there’s another trend hidden in this. Coaching brands, new brands that can find anything across the whole world, can surprise the consumer. But then knowing what the consumer doesn’t want. That’s the next step: that you can exclude what you don’t want. Just like with a master chef: just do something as long as it doesn’t contain blue cheese or coriander. This is also true for music, for media, for vacation destinations, for books.

iNap is an iPhone application that wakes you up when you reach your destination. The application costs $0.99 and is available in the Apple Store.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands will guide us, coach us. Later on we won’t have to pay attention to anything. When we wake up on the train, we’ll be told whether we have to get off at the front or the back of the carriage, which elevator we need to take, and that there’s a cab waiting for us at the door. It’ll eventually go so far that we can give our coat to a robot who’ll store it for us. The navigational system is an effective example of today. These are useful successors. But the real work has yet to come. Fodder for Pamper Planet.

Related trends

• 2050-2100: Pamper planet

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, better known as MGM, will be the first big movie studio which places 'full-length' movies on YouTube. Currently the movies are older ones and episodes of television series from the past which still have to be converted into a format suitable for YouTube. Viewers can watch these movies for free thanks to advertising.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Currently for free, but soon we’ll gladly pay for movies. Because with paying customers YouTube can finally do what it was created to do: entertaining people. And with all possible content ever created. That’s why YouTube is a home entertainment coaching brand in the making. Currently predominantly on the PC, but in a few years 95% of YouTube’s content will be watched on the big screen in the living room.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

LinkedIn, a business social network, advises people with events. By now LinkedIn 'reads' over 8000 events worldwide. You can select events based on industry, data and (traveling) distance. You can see who organizes the event, who's speaking and leave comments. Speakers get to see the event on their profile too. You can also see which colleagues and contacts are going. That might be the most important.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

People are herd animals; they do what others do. And they let themselves be led especially by their immediate environment. That’s true for both less-educated and well-educated people. That’s just how we work. Here, LinkedIn uses this principle flawlessly. Slowly, LinkedIn seems to be turning into a real career coaching brand: a brand that coaches you with your personal development. News, books, events, LinkedIn has it all. Soon LinkedIn will start to help students with their career start. Then high school students with their follow-up choices. Currently in only a few languages, but soon exactly in the language you need, that helps you best. This is a step in that direction.

Related trends

• Coaching brands
• Tribal

Wikitude gives you real time information about the display of your cell phone when you're pointing it at something. This is possible because the GPS knows where you are. Anyone who spots an interesting castle, for example, will be shown when it was built.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The media-evolution is becoming more and more clear. We can ask questions with everything we see. Just to whom? The traveling guide may be able to tell you everything about the history of your environment, but a brand that knows everything about nature might know exactly what you can eat and what you can’t, or which animals live there and are threatened with extinction. And yet other types of brands can tell you what you’d like to do around there. No one brand knows everything about you, know your interests in every area like the back of your hand. This is how multiple brands are created, multiple coaching brands, brands we can ask questions. This is a very clear step in that direction.

Related trends

• 2020-2035: Mediacompletion

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.

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.

American Express, a credit card company, is becoming a regular bank. The company has received permission to do this. This allows the company easier access to new funding.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

You lend money to people you trust. You trust people you know. You know people when you’ve experienced something together with them. When you’ve been together for a prolonged period. The idea of a credit card, loaning based on no relationship at all, is based on nothing. The new financial system that’ll come will be based completely on trust. People are only allowed to spend money if they have it. People are only allowed to borrow when there’s a guarantee or trust. And a bank might not always know you well, but the bank can have relationships with people who have trust in you. Banks will start to use such relationships. Banks will start to facilitate networks in which mutual trust is shown. And that trust will be the basis for lending someone money.

That spells the end of credit cards and credit card companies. This development is shown here.

Hinta, a Dutch price comparison site, now compares products on the iPhone. With it consumers can ask for product and price information anytime and anywhere with the interface, user-friendliness and the speed that they're used to of the iPhone. Both prices and reviews are available. If desired you can also order the product immediately from the cheapest provider.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

More and more brands that answer our beck-and-call are being created. Brands like Hinta are always available to help us. Currently in text, soon in voice. Currently as general product comparer, but soon Hinta will specialize in a specific area and will start to collect our data. Only in this way can Hinta distinguish itself from other brand (read: product comparers). The development of the ‘coaching brands’ category is in full swing.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

YouTube will begin to broadcast whole tv-series of the American CBS. It concerns series such as Beverly Hills 90210, Star Trek: The Original Series and The Young and the Restless. YouTube currently hopes to generate more advertisement income, because before, during and after the episodes there'll be advertisements. Its goal is to show more tvhits in the future. YouTube is already negotiating with other TV channels to make similar deals.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how home entertainment coaching brands are slowly shaped. They collect all content ever created, in any country, in any language, in any format, and will start to entertain us personally on the couch. For now behind the computer, but next year there’ll be innovations that will definitely turn the tv into a very personal medium, just like the computer is now. But then nice and easy sitting and getting entertained without complicated clicks. Just ‘surprise me!’. For now with advertisements, soon we’ll pay a very reasonable price, per minute. This predicted reality is coming ever closer.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Visitors to Dutch social network Hyves can easily leave a video message on profiles of friends and others without having to upload anything. The visitor clicks 'record' and then 'send' so that the profile owner will receive the message immediately. To make this possible the user does need to place a special widget (gadget, a special piece of code).

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Currently as an extension by third parties, but soon this’ll be a standard function of social networks. Just like scribbles, e-mails and text messages, voice mail and video messages are part of maintaining relationships. And not just for asynchronous traffic (without direct contacts), but also for direct traffic such as calling, chatting, or camming. Then the link to other social networks will follow, just like phone networks are all connected, and only then can Hyves (and its social network competition) grow into a full social coaching brand.

TravelPilot 700 N700, the newly available navigational system by Blaupunkt shows the street as we see it through our front window and also shows the desired directions for where we're driving. Here a demovideo. The device has a camera at the back which in a manner of speaking is see-through, like looking through a windowpane, and then projects the arrows real-time onto the screen. With this the manufacturer has a world-scoop.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Ever more we’re putting a shell around the physical world to interpret it quickly. Currently in a separate system, soon with our front window, through special glasses to our contact lenses. Less and less weight to carry while we’re helped more and more efficiently. We can ask questions with anything we aim at and get answers. And walking a route alone will be as easy as someone walking with you holding your hand. This is again a great step in that direction.

Peek & Pompe (Dutch), a Utrecht real estate agent, is the first agency in the Netherlands to place a quick response-code on a house. Special posters on the windows of the houses which are for sale have an extra large qr-code. Passersby who are interested can aim their cell phone and read the two-dimensional bar code. Then they'll automatically be transferred to the mobile website of Peek & Pompe. They won't have to enter a URL. The exploration will continue on the mobile website.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is a nice example of product-activation. It fits in the trans of the dialogue in which the subject of discussion returns, in which both parties (the brand and the consumer) recall which product they’re talking about. Currently with qr-codes, but later we’ll walk along the street, spot a house, hear in our earphone that it’s for sale and can enter directly into the virtual house, while we’re really standing still.

Related trends

• Brand-dialogue

Voetbal21.nl (Soccer21; Dutch) claims to be the first soccer community which focuses on all 1 million amateur soccer players in the Netherlands. The site offers space for photos, videos, statistics and reports of all competitions from the 5500 different competitions. The site is partially a social network within which each soccer player can make their own profile and add friends. Site users can have multiple roles: player, team coach, club official or supporter. Each role has its own possibilities. There are also pages by team, club and competition. Voetbal21.nl has all the information on clubs, competitions and matches on the website. The data comes from public sources.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

In the creation of sport coaching brands we see at the end of the first decade of this century that new brands especially collect information for us: put everything together. Brands that also know everything about us, and our friends, can optimize the social element of our sport. In a next step this type of brand will learn everything about our performances and or social role in groups (what is our social, informal role in the team). Based on that they can coach us with our qualities in mind. This is a step in that direction.

Related trends

• Tribal

Kieskeurig (Picky; Dutch)'s new site offers extended store profiles. With these Kieskeurig deepens its store assessments.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

It’s an example of how coaching brands in the making work. They don’t just ensure a complete offer (collect all available products), but also all the ways to get them. The next step will be: which product, which store suits me best, today, from where I currently am? Then brands like Kieskeurig will be even more valuable than they are today and we’ll slowly start to pay for their advice.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

YouTube sells music to Americans through iTunes and Amazon.com. Certain music videos are shown with an additional button: 'download this music'.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how music videos and music are slowly brought back together. Soon we’ll buy music and choose all kinds of variants. Do we want the sheet music too? Do we want just the vocals? Just the instrumentation? Do we want the video as well? Or maybe with a holographic projection? Or do we want to record it ourselves and sell it again? Or compose our own music video? Soon we’ll be buying an experience, or better: we’ll have a subscription to audio entertainment, or better: audio experiences. The digital troubadour is at our side. This is only a beginning.