Customers of 3dfoot.com can let their feet be scanned in stores. The data will be saved online. When you then come into the online store, you can call on your profile and try the shoes on virtually.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Fashion coaching brands advise you on the buying and maintenance of clothing. They do have to know everything about you. The form of your feet, your legs, your body. Which colors suit you, how you walk, how you move. And especially what your friends like. And what you’ll be doing. This is a first, but useful, step in the development of this type of brand.

Related trends

• More 3D

Kiesbeter.nl (Dutch) compares health care per complains. Instead of searching through the available offers, the user can choose from: respiration; allergies; bones; joints; muscles; genetics and chromosomes; mental health; genitalia; heart; arteries; blood and lymph; brains and nervous center; hormones; skin; mucous membrane and connective tissue; infections; cancer; throat, nose and ear; mouth and teeth, kidneys and urinary system; eyes and line of sight; accidents and poisonings; digestion]; metabolism; reproduction and pregnancy. Then those who treat these can be compared. Furthermore there's a medical encyclopedia that filters by age and gender. Men will get specific explanations and pictures of the male body and women of the female body.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Health coaching brands are getting a more solid shape. Currently with a simple generalization on age and gender, soon such a brand will keep a very detailed profile. That profile is connected to your medical file. Furthermore not just health care in your own country will be involved, but in the whole world. And a next step is guiding us in our health. A lot to do for now, but KiesBeter (ChooseBetter) is nicely on its way.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

On bungalowtrips.nl vacation goers can now, just like with hotels, rent a bungalow on any desired day. Until now bungalow parks have only offered vacations in predetermined periods, the so-called mid-weeks and mid-weekends. They hope to address primarily pensioners through this as pensioners aren't restricted to free weekends or vacations.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’re slowly switching to a network economy in which supply and demand are connected flexibly and in real-time. The offers per week or mid-week were typical thoughts of the old times: product and price had to be recorded in a leaflet after all. We’re slowly but surely saying goodbye to this kind of concept and this is a nice example.

Related trends

• Network economy

Qash (Dutch) offers you insight in your spending patterns by reading and analyzing the data of your various bank accounts, credit cards and/or savings accounts. Each transaction will automatically be given a label and through this categorization you'll know exactly where your money is going. On top of that Qash can give you ideas on where to save money. Cheaper subscriptions, for example.

ditismijndroombaan.nl, a new Dutch career site, lets people who are looking for a job describe in their own words what their ideal job would look like, enhanced by experience and education. The recruiter can then read the introductions for free, but the complete resume costs 19 euros.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how career coaching brands are slowly shaped in the network economy. In this economy an employee is considered as someone offering a service. And in the development of the demand-driven economy it’s important to first gather the available offers so that others can choose from it. Just like a hotel room: first you map all available rooms, look at their availability and within that the consumer can look. That also goes for people who can help you in the long run, call it ‘staff’. These too need to be mapped so that you can make a choice. That too is a part of the network economy and this is a nice example.

Related trends

• Coaching brands
• Network economy

HuizenZoeker.nl, a new Dutch housing site, collects the offers from the various other housing sites (Funda, Huislijn, Dimo, Vbo, Era, Remax, Makelaarsland, LMV, Garantiemakelaars) and combines them into a complete overview. For more information on a house one is referred to the site where the house was found. If a house is available on multiple sites, the consumer can choose which site they want to look at then.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

At this time, the creation of coaching brands is still all about completeness in the category: give me a site which lists everything. Only those sites will survive, only those brands will survive. Then it’ll become an art to offer added value. That’s the basis on which home coaching brands can be created.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

The American store chain Kohls, with 975 physical locations, launched a new line that's only for sale on Stardoll.com, a virtual meeting place for teenagers. Using Stardollars they can buy virtual clothes. In the first sixteen days the virtual shop attracted 2.2 million visitors and sold 1.8 million items. Goal is to familiarize kids with the clothes Kohl sells and seduce them to come into the physical store to buy clothes there.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Where the virtual world seems more and more really, eventually it’s all about clothing in the real world with it’s rich sensory experiences. By wearing our clothing virtually first people can give their uncertainty about their looks a place. If the environment approves the next step can be taking. Kolhs gets precisely how this works.

Business social network LinkedIn has started to allow registered users to hold group discussions.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how a serious form of online conferences is formed: people already know each other and can also bring in people from their social network. In a next step this kind of discussion will integrate with live discussions/chats to give the feeling of being in a real workshop through speech and images. Still not all physical sessions will be replaced.

The ultimate will be real workshops of course, because this is the only way to be stimulated by all your senses. Furthermore, the social obligation to remain seated allows you to create a bond between people that will never be feasible in the virtual world. But such a session would have to be incredibly special and not a lecture in the traditional sense. It’s like with a vacation: the more you get the impression through impressive images that you’re in a specific location, the more you get the feeling ‘I want that too!’

LinkedIn, as

• in Dutch

Business social network LinkedIn now has a special application for the iPhone. With this users can write a status update immediately, look up contacts or send them a message.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how coaching brands continue to be shaped. Now we’re getting pC functions on the cell phone. Soon we’ll be able to call those people (no need for a phone number, just click). We can automatically record conversations and let speech interpretation report it. And later, much later, our conversations will be analyzed (automatically!) For example, if we hold a sales conversation we’ll receive tips on how to do better. Which emotions we failed to register and kept talking. This allows this type of brand to grow into a coach. But first they should be always with us. That feels right.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

An outfit designed by a player of The Sims 2 is now available in almost 1,000 H&M stores world-wide. The clothes are the result of a design contest in which all Sims-players could take part. The context involved designed a piece of clothing based on the style of H&M. The uploaded creations could then be seen in six virtual fashion shows. Entries by at least 1,000 designers were judged by over 100,000 people. It generated around 500 million impressions. The winning design is recognizable in H&M stores by a special The Sims 2 label and brand.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands facilitate the design of a product, like they borrow their right to exist from the facilitation of consumers, in their lives. A brand is, such as it were, a huge group of people of which the most active people involve themselves full-time, sometimes even longer. These people are serving the community. Every part of what they do has to add value to the life of the consumer. H&M understands how this process works and is taking leaps in the brand coming out, the process in which traditional brands reinvent themselves.

Related trends

• Brand coming out

Supercook puts together a recipe based on the ingredients in your home. You look at what's in your fridge, pantry or kitchen cupboards, add your ingredients and the search engine will find recipes that allow you to make a meal immediately. Useful when you want something quickly and don't have time to go to the supermarket (or when it's closed).

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands will assist us with everything. Currently with what’s in our home, soon these groceries, recipe databases and our preferences will be combined. In your car on your way home from work you can consult with your food coaching brand to go out, have something delivered, pick up a meal or ingredients yourself or making something based on what you’ve got at home. Because soon your food coaching brand will have access to your kitchen cupboards and will read your supply through small (rfid) chips that will be in every product sooner or later. Then food coaching brands can grow into a complete brand. We’re truly at the beginning of what’s about to come.

At Kaap Hoorn, a restaurant in the Dutch city Haren, visitors can now order and pay through their cell phones. A visitor can look up the menu on their cell phone and place an order. It's paid up front by RaboMobiel. The receipts are printed after payment is received.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Step by step we’re saying goodbye to paper. Not just customer passes, not just magazines, but we’ll also see less of all small paper, such as menu cards, flyers or doctor’s receipts. With as most important reason that brands want to communicate and communication happens per definition in a dialogue not a monologue as we were forced to by paper.

The biggest world wide job search engine CareerJet is now also available for the Russian job market. Careerjet searches for all vacancies at Dutch interim offices, newspapers, companies and other job websites. The list of vacancies is then shown based on the criteria of the person looking for a job. This list refers a person to the original job offer where one can apply for the job immediately.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how brands will start to work more and more globally. Not because they’re globalizing themselves, but because consumers are de-nationalizing: they too can get a job internationally. Not just by moving, or by being there every now and again, but more and more jobs can be done remotely. Career coaching brands facilitate this new budding form of working by showing all the jobs available in the world. This is a step in that direction.

Related trends

• De-nationalizing

The Dutch television guide Veronica Magazine is now available for the iPhone.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Each brand will enter the dialogue with the consumer through each screen. Even magazines, like Veronica. Cell phones will in a relatively short time replace remote controls. That future is brought a step closer here. Soon we’ll see the missed broadcasts and magic them onto our television with a push on the button.

Through the Dutch site Startpagina Verkeer (Startpage Traffic) it's now also possible to obtain real time detailed information regarding traffic jams. The information originates from the TomTom.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

This is how real time information is unlocked on all possible screens. In this case not only through navigational systems, but also on all other screens, like the computer screen. A new type of brand can be created that will guide us through the world based on our preferences, availability and our budget.

The International Olympic Comitee, the IOC, will broadcast its own images of the Olympics in Beijing via YouTube. In countries where the television rights haven't been sold and in countries where those rights haven't been sold exclusively, the IOC will takeover the role of broadcaster. The games' organization won't have to make deals with television broadcasting companies because it'll place the images directly on the internet. No full sports competitions will be offered, but solely summaries and highlights. Inhabitants of 77 countries (such as Afghanistan and Ethiopia, but also Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Thailand) will profit from this move.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

And so the media landscape is slowly taking shape. All brands are building brand worlds where they have high quality interaction, dialogue, with the consumer. The time of programming the consumer’s television-evening is slowly ending. Currently for 77 countries only, but soon for all of them. We’ll start paying the IOC for its content—that’s also part of the development—but will be given an experience we’ll never forget in return, it’ll put every previous television broadcast to shame. It’ll become the trick to select the right experiences and for that home entertainment coaching brands will be at our side. This is how everything correlates with one another, this is how a wholly different world is created, one in which the consumer is central.

Related trends

• Brand worlds