Category: Brand Evolution

At TravellersTV.com everything revolves arround video content based on holiday destinations. You see the continents on a click-able Google map. Once you have clicked a video over the continent begins. Then you can zoom in on a destionation and you will find related video chanels (in total there are 1200 destinations and 20 lifestyle tv channels). The videos often include supplementary text. In addition you find a buttons by every destination for more information over accommodation, food and drink, attractions, events, activities, transport and shoppig. You can rate, tag and comment on everything and you can also send the information on to others. But... it's still a beta version, sometimes things work and sometimes they don't, the content is far from complete but it is still well worth a look. A good concept with a lot of possibilities for good business models in the future...

House specialist Immospy, known in the Netherlands as miljoenhuizen.nl, is now available in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian. By focusing on Europe (instead of individual countries) almost 4 million houses for sale are made available.

Via a widget, a tiny piece of software, the Rijksmuseum places a new art object on the sites of its users each day: every day a new art object, on users websites, on their profiles on social networking sites, or (as we have done here) on a their blogs. At the moment of posting there was an image of a painting of a man with angels wings, tomorrow there will be something else.

Rabobank's brand agent Yvette (Dutch) can now also be found at the virtual bank branch in the girly game GoSupermodel. The first day that the virtual bank branch was open she received 1.545 mails and 8.342 chat sessions were started with her. The branch itself was visited 14.453 times.

Playboy has created a version of Playboy.com for the iPhone, iPlayboy contains, amongst other things, Playboy radio, videos, tips for going out and of course the Playboy photos. Have you always wanted to know the difference between a Bunny, a Playmate and a Centerfold? The website offers an ‘Ask Hef' function that will give you the answer to this and much more. The site was launched with the choosing of ‘Miss Mobile Playboy'.

Via Amazon TextBuy the buying hungry consumer can directly order whatever catches their eye in a shop, on the street or in a bar. Users send a text message with the name, description, barcode or ISBN number of the product. If Amazon is selling similar items then you will be sent a message with the results. The consumer can immediately buy one of the products or ask for a wider selection of products.

Dutch broadcaster KRO has developed a music player that takes account of your mood. You select your mood in the circle and the music starts to play. It's also possible to determine your mood by taking a psychological test. The player can be added to a consumers profile on the Dutch social networking site Hyves as a widget.

Coffee retailer Starbucks has introduced MyStarbucksIdea, a user generated discussion forum about products and service. Registered users can share their ideas about new products and can vote on others ideas too, ensuring that it is clear which suggestions are best. The ideas that are implemented can be followed via the site.

The ANWB is letting it's members vote for it's new logo. Members enter their membership number and are then able to vote. The ANWB is a Dutch association that provides, amongst other services, breakdown help to it's members.

Seatguru tells you exactly where to sit in the aeroplane. After selecting an airline the consumer receives information about the planes used by that airline and how the seating is configured.

Dutch mobile operator Telfort lets you do almost everything online: receiving bills, keeping control of your contract or pay-as-you-go connection. In the case of theft you can block the sim card as well as requesting and activating a new one. This removes the need to call or write to the company. The developments have lead to a 36,5% increase in logins (via mc, Dutch). In the future brands will be built in dialogue. Currently we talk about self service, but it’s just service: the consumers questions are answered more quickly and they receive a visual overview of their calling habits which could never be given over the telephone. Now it’s done with an eye to cost saving and the interaction is pretty business like and cold, soon emotion will play a role. Only then can dialogue in brand thinking really get started.

Nokia will soon be releasing a shoot-to-translate function that translates all the text found in a photo (via nu, Dutch). Mobile phones are becoming virtual screens over a physical world. Now we need to aim our mobiles, soon we will only need to look at something to have a translation spoken into our ear. Later the text will disappear because we will be able to ask everything in our own language.  ‘Where do I need to go?, ‘what’s this, ‘who’s that?. The world reacts to us, understands us, anticipates us. The era in which personal brands can come into full bloom.

Caterer Sodexho has changed it’s name worldwide to Sodexo and visualises this in a logo animation. The letter ‘h’ that originally stood for ‘hotel’ has been removed as the company now operates more broadly. The change makes the name easier to pronounce and spell (via mf, Dutch). Brands are choosing to make their communication increasingly visual and now show changes in their organisations in a totally visual way. This is a nice example of the trend.

Reuters Labs, the laboratory of the news agency Reuters, automatically recognises people in video with advanced pattern recognition software. If you search for George Bush(you get a choice of two people with the same name), George Clooneyof George Harrison you are very quickly presented with a list of the videos in which those people appear (via dc, Dutch).

Sounds advanced, but soon we’ll be able to walk down the street, point our camera at our surroundings and use face recognition (and other characteristics such as the ‘walk’) to see who is walking past us. We won’t need to tag any more photos or videos because it will be done automatically. The online identity and the real identity will meld completely. It will have an enormous impact on society. For example, in maintaining public order or restricting access to offices. But you could never again walk straight past a friend who you hadn’t seen for 30 years. Your personal contact brand will know exactly who it is.

Online company guide iLocal puts companies on the mobile map. With a special program that can be downloaded to your mobile phone, you can search via company category and your location is pin pointed by GPS or GSM antenna locations in the area (via dc, Dutch). Brands are looking for a dialogue with us via every possible screen. Search and directory functions are first but soon all brands will be findable. They give us information about the location, or about the (brand) products we find whilst shopping or products that we can find in the area. This is a step in that direction.