Category: Brand Evolution

In my book I predicted that all company/brand logos would be animated in the future. The static version would be considered as boring, dull, flat in the future. Well', I'm not on top of the trend anymore, but just stumbled upon Aurora, a 3D tool for logo animation, which is proof to me that the market for logo animation starts to grow.

Ticketmaster Teams With Facebook So You Can Sit Next To Your Friends. Those who are reserving their seats will see a mock-up of an arena seat map indicating where their Facebook friends will be sitting, so the can reseerve a spot next or closeby.

I’ve been writing about this phenonemon since 2004, and now it’s becoming reality. Finally, I’ve been waiting for this!!!

Soon, all our purchases will be powered by social media. For example: the next time when I visit a restaurant in Nigeria, I can exactly see where my friends have been, and what their experience were. This will influence my decisions way more, than any (anonymous) review site can ever do.

We’re social creatures you know;)

Brand agents, the perfect brand representatives. Emotional, intelligent, empathic, helpful and available 24/7. However, innovation can stop due to the 130 confusing synonyms a brand agent comes across with.

Brand Agents are artificial employees that represent brands in an intelligent and bi-directional engaging conversation. They typically appear in customer service related areas on websites, where they replace the frequently asked questions. However, they now tend to move to home pages of large business 2 consumer brands. Their responsibility is growing. A Brand Agent used to be responsible for about 30% of the questions concerning customer service about recently purchased products, but now some of them are able to answer 95% of the questions. Furthermore, they are no longer only about earlier purchases, but they also provide information about products the consumer has not yet bought. Brand Agents are shifting in their area of expertise!

Someone send me this link, no further information, but inspiration anyway. Video speaks for itself.

Just wondering why I have never written about Milo, a virtual agent, conversational avatar, chatbot responding to voice, face and gestures.

He recognises facial expressions and emotions of his interlocutor and re-acts accordingly. The video is a demonstration of a Milo's ground breaking technology created by a computer game designer Peter Molyneux and his team over at Lionhead Studios

It’s a gaming thing nowadays, but characters like Milo will soon dominate the brand scape: a brand agents, chatbot representing brands, they will answer questions from consumers about brands, about companies, about government. And eventually (it will take two more decades) we won’t be able to notice the difference between Milo and a real human being. It’s all a matter of time…

This video is getting interesting after one minute. It actually 'sucks' objects.

This has potential for the future. Imagine an artificial hand, a thin ‘sucking’ skin which is controllable through nanotechnology on every square millimeter. Although the hand can make simple movements and behave natural like a human hand would do, it also has some extraordinary skills such as sucking tiny objects. Quite convenient when cleaning stuff, or holding something for you.

I haven't written a lot lately (very busy with the chatbots.org, but those who have followed me since 2005 and have read my book, will recognize many trends reinforce my predictions of five years ago.

Here's an example: Spotify. A coaching music brand in its early days. For 9,99 a month, you have unlimited access to ad-free music. Connected to your friends through your Facebook account. My 2004 prediction was simple: it would not longer be about possession of music, but people would pay in the future for the right to play music.

What will happen in the coming five years? Brands like Spotify will respond to our emotional reaction. They will notify how our movements will change, our tone of voice, our facial exppression. We don’t have to rate music any longer, our feedback is fully clear.

And from there, music coaching brands will feed us with music we need: which will change our emotional state. And that’s where the word ‘coaching’ comes in. The decision to select music for a particular person, on a particular moment, or a particular place, is not very simple. It’s not about selecting the persons favorite song. Being happy might not be the best mood to move to about the funeral of a family member or bad news at work. Or maybe, it is. Coaching is about understanding an individual.

So even though people think this is where it’s all heading to, it’s actually just the beginning…

The future of shopping according to Cisco. It's looks as Science Fiction, but this future is already here (aside from a few minor technology problems such as lighting in the stores).

The most important roles of stores is to determine your current measurements. You can order anything you like, from brands, it can be tailored to your wishes, deliverable in every possible color, you can see how it combines with clothes you purchased before and which are still in your wardrobe (i.e. clothes you haven’t thrown away), you can ask what your friends think, and what they bought which will transform shopping to a far more social experience.

Having things on stock is no longer an issue. It will delivered to your home, before you even arrive after traveling back. No more need to carry bags. You can shop from home as easy as shop from any other location in the world. But being with your friends (both physical as virtual), provides a new dimension to the shopping experience.

And obvvously, you’ll be assisted by a brand agent (or a chatbot, dependent on the terminology you prefer), instead of a real human, an artificial character with far more knowledge than a human human could ever possibly have.

This is the future, but only a step into the future.

Rocket Taxi: This App checks your location with GPS and lists nearby taxi companies with distances. Just select one, press on it and a call will be initiated to the cab company.

Greenpeace has introducted an Iphone application that gives users a quick and handy guide to finding the greenest toilet paper, tissues, paper towels, and paper napkins sold at the supermarket. Ideally, the best products contain 100 percent recycled content (at least 50 percent of which is from post-consumer materials) and avoid the use of chlorine or chlorine compounds in the whitening process. Products that meet this criteria include Green Forest, Natural Value and Seventh Generation while products from companies like Kleenex, Charmin, Angel Soft, Cottonelle, Brawny, and Scott fall short. The application is free to download.

TellMe for Windows Mobile 6.5 isn't just an app, it's a one-button hub for voice commands of all kinds, including text messaging, making calls, and also jumping to Microsoft Live Search with natural language queries like "weather in San Francisco, California," "pizza in Kansas City" or "mother's day gift ideas."

This patent for automatically sending an audio or video reply to an iChat call is only useful for computer to computer calling, but also for iPhone to computer calling, or computer to iPhone calling.

The server could additionally be set to store video responses, such that when a person comes back online, they could view one or more clips recorded by their peers. To facilitate this, Apple proposes creating a generic video mailbox which could be accessed from iPhones or a website.

Google Voice, is an alternative call apllication to run on smart phones or other devices. Google Voice is now about to hit iPhones by way of an app. This app for the iPhone has immediately access to your contacts.

Here is how it works: you don't press you regular 'Phone' application, but you select your Google Voice button. You just dial a number or select it from your contacts, as you would do in your regular phone application. The App diales out to Google and you' be a called back to connect both sides and you press the Green button. In this way, you do not only skip the standard fees charged to you by your operator, it will also allow you to maintain your calls from any other smartphone or devices. It actually disconnects your telephone number from your device. Additionally, you can also SMS people the same way.

Wave is a new communication platform by Google. It's a Frothy Collaborative Mix of Chat, Instant Messaging, Twitter and Google Docs in Real-Time:. A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more..

Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.