[5] Experience Branding keyword in Second Life

The German brandcommunity bureau Komjuniti has done research in Second Life. They asked 200 users (avatars) their opinions about active companies and brands in the virtual world.

In general the questioned people are not satisfied; 72 percent of the questioned are disappointed about the activities of the companies in Second Life.
Only 7 percent thinks the appearance of companies in Second Life has a positive effect on the image of the company.

Nils Andres, director of Komjuniti: 'Because of the mediahype, SL-players have very high expectations about the technology and the companies, but they don't meet these expectations.'

For example the empty office of ABN Amro in Second Life; Andres says that because of this empty space, the players presume that the other avatars don't like what ABN has to offer and therefore don't pay any attention to the office as well.

'The real success depends on how much the companies really are involved in the game and the players and well thought-through contentmanagement to create structural interest from the avatars. It is only then that you create a brand experience.'

More about this research you can find here.

Women's Marketing

People:
Interview with Sanne

Important to her:
Friends, family, colleagues

Brands:
Only, Vera Mode, H&M, D&G, Channel

Style:
- A combination of modern/ classy

- Dressed trendy

-Character:
Polite, selfconcious, modern, self confident

-

Places:
Lunchrooms / Bar / Café / Sportschool

Dudok / Mockamore / Beans & Bagels
Products:

Ipod / Alfa Romeo 147 / Samsung D900 / Make up Channel

Places:
Work, gym, lunchrooms

















Brands:
Combining expensive and cheap and second-handed products. Personalize your style with accessories.














Mentality:
Strong, self-confident

















Products:
Back to nature

My life in 2020

Customer made

Definition:

“The phenomenon of corporations creating goods, services and experiences in close cooperation with experienced and creative consumers, tapping into their intellectual capital, and in exchange giving them a direct say in (and rewarding them for) what actually gets produced, manufactured, developed, designed, serviced, or processed.”

What is it not?
Personalization or customizing products. This takes place after the basics of the product have been defined by the company.

What is it?
Consumers have always been saving up their insights about stuff they consume. Nowadays, 'Generation C' (creative people who have access to professional hardware, software, online distribution channels etc.) combined with millions of lead users, early adopters and brilliant business people create together "The Global Brain". Companies use the opinion of the people from this "Global Brain" in the process of new product development. Therefore this trend is called Customer Made.

src: www.trendwatching.com

Movie: The Island

The Island
By Michael Bay
With Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson

The movie 2019. Times have changed. Rich people can get exact copies of themselves, clones or agnates as they are called in the movie, which serve as their insurance policies. All of this with the goal to be able to live longer. Does your liver need to be replaced? No problem. The agnate is ‘killed’ and there is your liver. You don’t want to carry your own child? No worries. The agnate will do it for you.
The company which was able to create these agnates promised the agnates wouldn’t have certain emotions (like curiosity, sexuality), so that no problems will occur. Of course this goes wrong.
The agnate community is a utopian facility, somewhere in a desert, deeply under the ground. They are told that they are the only survivors of ‘The Contamination’. Every night somebody wins the daily lottery. The price is a one way ticket to a paradise island which hasn’t been contaminated, where they can be free. At some point one of the agnates (Lincoln) does starts to get curious. He asks questions, but doesn’t get answers. Why do they still find survivors after all this time? Why can he never have bacon for breakfast? He gets suspicious.
When he accidentally finds out ‘The Island’ is actually the death of the agnate, he escapes together with another agnate (Jordan). They go out to find their ‘sponsors’; the people with the insurance policy, to tell them what is going on, and that the agnates do have feelings and emotions and they want to live as well as the normal human beings.
An exciting chase follows; will they reach their goal?

The movie raises a lot of ethical questions concerning cloning. It shows how the whole cloning concept could evolve into something terrible. It makes you think about how selfish people can be and how dangerous it is to experiment with these relatively new technologies of which we know so little.
In the movie there are some very interesting advanced technologies which might not be far away to actually be developed, are already in development or are just recently developed:

• Information displays on the street
• These displays are activated by speech and allow a user to find information about the city and its habitants. Like the golden pages but then digitalized and interactive.
• Videophones
• Memory implants in the brains when creating the agnate
• Virtual fighting in front of a large screen, while a holographic display shows the actual fight (Nintento Wii, but more advanced)
• A urinal checks the composition of the urine and based on that gives you advice on what to eat
• A real (ubiquitous) desktop interface
• Browsers are directly driven by hands: drawing, writing and moving the browsers around etc.
• Trains driven by electro magnetic fields
• Sleep is registered; dreams and REM sleep are recorded.

My opinion about the movie The movie quite surprised me. I expected it to be way over the top and completely surreal, and at some points of course it was (flying trams through the air), but it also showed some serious developments and I think it opens some ethic discussions about for example the development of the cloning technologies.
What I really noticed was the obvious attendance of advertising in the movie. Puma, X-Box and MSN played a really big role in the scenario:
- When Jordan and Lincoln are virtually fighting, the X-Box logo is shown almost during the whole scene.
- When Jordan and Lincoln use the information display on the street in L.A., the MSN logo is put on the screen for a few seconds
- At the beginning of the movie, Lincoln can’t find his left shoe. Puma shoes are shown all over the screen.

More about the movie:
The Island

[4] The Apple iRack

src: YouTube

Trend research March 9th 2007

Individually together
Communicate in a personal environment
(podcasting, profiles)
Co-creation through another medium
(CS3)
Exploit existing media
(sms becomes a marketing tool, paid bloggers)

Back to basics
Ecolife, back to nature
(green is the new black)
Friends and family become more important
People think about the meaning of life, want to enjoy the little things more, driven by fear


The Red Line
The world is getting saturated. Anti-materialism becomes the antithesis.
(the most expensive things are bought, people can't be skinnier, more fat, can't be sexier and more naked on tv etc)

[3] "Is it free? Ok thanks"

Not very surprising, but the prejudice about the Dutch is confirmed: greedyness.

Market research company MarketResponse published results of a research about what form of product promotion the Dutch consumers like best. Guess what?
Exactly. Sampling. Anything for free, right? 72% of the 500 shopping people who were interviewed say they like this way of product promotion. Interesting is, that very often people afterwards don't even remember what the brand of the product was.
Contests are the least popular. Only 11% say they think this is an effective tool.

src: Market Response

[2] Back to Basic

Trendbox has done research about Dutch people's good intentions for 2007.
In the results there is a clear 'back to basic'-trend.
Family, friends, health and nature rule the result:

1. Enjoy the simple things in life more (65%)
2. Enjoy nature more (50%)
3. Spend more time on partner/ family (46%)
4. Spend more time on fitness and shape (41%)
5. Eat healthier (40%)
6. Show more interest for friends and family (40%)
7. Read more books (38%)
8. Work more in and around the house (32%)
9. Improve health (27%)
10. Think more about the meaning of life (25%)

src: trendbox

[1] Flirting in the year 2007

A clothing line from Italy called 'Shyno' has developed clothing which enables people to flirt with each other... through sms. Each shirt has a unique sms-code, so whenever you see somebody you like wearing a shyno-shirt, you can surf to the Shyno sms site and leave this person a message.

src: gridskipper

Trends

Relevant trends for our project:

Interactive (TV) format for MTV Networks

Technological trends

• Development and popularity of different canals
• Narrow-, Pod-, Blue-, Vodcasting
• Second Life
• Mobility
• WiFi
• GPRS
• Need for connection
• User Generated Content
• Interaction
• Social Networking
• Participate
• Streaming
• Developments based on fiction movies
• Less = more
• Simple interfaces
• Easy accessibility
• Social networking (Social interaction)
• Hyves, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr
• Gadgets

Social trends

• Environmental changes (developments)
• Climate change
• Growing awareness
• More social (politics)
• Multicultural
• Integration
• Information culture
• Health
• Quality has more value than brand
• Back to basic/ back to nature
• Large gap between generations
• Open-minded

TV trends:

• Reality
• Real life soaps
• Live
• Interaction
• Red Button Advertising
• Retro TV series
• Cosby show, Fresh Prince, Flying Doctors

Marketing trends:

• Experience branding
• Emotions
• The frequent existence of hypes
• Bling bling
• Commercials:
• Straight to the point
• Self sarcasm
• Crossmedial

Fashion trends

• Retro
• High pants
• Tights for men
• Pants in shoes