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On this blog we assemble the world's sharpest minds in marketing and strategy innovation. People who spark exceptional insights in their field of expertise and inspire their readers to action.

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October 30, 2006

Advertising Age - MediaWorks - Street Furniture Gets Interactive

by: David Polinchock
From Ad Age:
The technology inside mobile phones is now so complex that it deserves an advertising medium that reflects that processing power. Airport passengers in Lisbon have been able to experience such a medium thanks to a new campaign from Nokia. Inside the departure lounge is a single site that offers a glimpse of the future of out-of-home advertising.

Continue reading "Advertising Age - MediaWorks - Street Furniture Gets Interactive" »

Technology Enables Product Placement in CGM

by: David Polinchock

In about '93, I gave a presentation at one of the virtual reality conferences about the future of advertising and this is one of the things I discussed. I think that having this kind of real product integration will be very important in the future and will allow for the content and the product to live together in a very natural way. If while watching a show, you could click on the outfits and order them through your TV, I think people would go for it! I know that I would. Of course, they'll need to watch several things:

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October 27, 2006

Brain Registers Subliminal Nude Images

by: Roger Dooley

This is one of those experiments that must have raised a few eyebrows during the approval process… “Let’s get this straight, you are going to show subjects invisible pictures of naked people and see if they unconsciously remember seeing them…”

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Web Video: More than Regurgitated Cockroaches

by: Joseph Mann 

Back in June 2005, more than 94 million people in the U.S., or 56 percent of the domestic Internet population, viewed a streaming video online according to Comscore Networks.1 Web video has come a long way in the year since: in July of this year Comscore data confirmed reports of 100 million worldwide daily video streams viewed from YouTube.com alone.2

Continue reading "Web Video: More than Regurgitated Cockroaches" »

October 26, 2006

Top Ten Trends in Marketing Innovation

by: Stefan Kolle

I’ve put together the 10 key trends I see for 2007 in Marketing Innovation. None of these are new, except for Net Promoter Scores which have only been around for a few years.

And, OK, I have to admit that some of these might end up being more wishful thinking then actual trends, but I get the disctinctive feeling many marketers are actually starting to wake up.

Continue reading "Top Ten Trends in Marketing Innovation" »

Better Marketing Accountability without Better Performance Won’t Improve Job Security

by: Jon Miller

Sales & Marketing Management magazine recently posted that the average tenure of a sales manager / VP is 19 months, which I found courtesy of B2Blog.

Continue reading "Better Marketing Accountability without Better Performance Won’t Improve Job Security" »

Product Placement in Consumer-Generated Videos

by: Ilya Vedrashko

Ha! This could well be the monetization model everyone's been looking for, if the technology is robust enough. The system is a lot like the green interactive dots in the Shai videos, but work with other type of content besides porn.

Continue reading "Product Placement in Consumer-Generated Videos" »

Thought of the Day

by: David Armano

http://images.scotsman.com/2005/10/15/tm1510secondb.jpg"People in SL are expressing what they would LIKE to do in reality. For example, it's easy to pimp your car in second life and clearly lots of people want to customize their transport there. All the major auto companies are piling into SL to learn about this--and build their big after-market customizing business in the real world."
~Bruce Nussbaum

Original Post: http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2006/10/thought_of_the__1.html

October 25, 2006

How to Change the World: Defensibility

by: Guy Kawasaki

Blog reader Curtis Thompson asked me a very good question a few days ago: What should an entrepreneur say when she’s asked what makes her company defensible? This question is more and more common as more and more entrepreneurs start “Web 2.0 companies,” and investors torture themselves by wondering why they didn’t fund YouTube.

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“Margaret” Goes to Forrester

by: David Armano

Well, today I got to attend the Forrester “Humanizing The Digital Experience” event.  Actually, Margaret—one of my colleagues couldn't make it today, so I went in her place.  That’s right, I was the guy with the dark hair, rectangle specs and “Margaret” on my name tag.  Yeah, I got a few looks.  Well, only in the morning—the kind folks at Forrester reprinted a nametag for me.

Continue reading "“Margaret” Goes to Forrester" »

At New Resource Bank, Money Talks ... Green

by: Joel Makower

A lot of environmental types get squeamish when the talk turns to money and finance. They believe that most notions of capitalism fly in the face of sustainability, and vice versa. Money is so unseemly, it seems.

Continue reading "At New Resource Bank, Money Talks ... Green" »

October 24, 2006

The YouTube Side of Life

by: Alain Thys

If you haven't yet seen it, this video is a great edit of what people tend to get up to on YouTube.  There are probably a dozen ways to analyse this, yet from my perspective it's also just good viewing (all 9 minutes).

Continue reading "The YouTube Side of Life" »

Assistive Technologies

by: Dick Stroud 

Why does Wal Mart or Tesco not have a section of their stores dedicated to assistive technologies (i.e. technologies that assist people who have some form of disability resulting from illness or ageing)?

Continue reading "Assistive Technologies" »

Nissan Puts Sentra Into Second Life

by: Ilya Vedrashko

As promised last week, Nissan has just unveiled a Second Life extension of its campaign for Sentra. Here's the location's SL URL, and here are more details from Giff at Electric Sheep.

Continue reading "Nissan Puts Sentra Into Second Life" »

October 23, 2006

“MIT” Digital Drawing Board: Innovation is In the Eye Of the Beholder

by: Yann Gourvennec

image of a digital drawing board courtesy of Promothean FranceIn the following video presentation, you will discover the so-called MIT digital drawing board complete with geometrical recognition and simulation of movements. Everybody on the Internet or so seems to have seen this video, and a lot of bloggers have liked it and commented on it.

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Why Blogging Matters: 6 Degrees of Perspective

by: David Armano

The following "group post" is the Brainchild of Eric Kintz from HP.  Eric recently coordinated this effort between myself and some very respectable names representing distinctly different areas related to marketing. 

Continue reading "Why Blogging Matters: 6 Degrees of Perspective" »

Nielsen To Track Video Games

by: Ilya Vedrashko

"Nielsen Media Research on Wednesday announced an electronic rating service to track who is playing what game.

Continue reading "Nielsen To Track Video Games" »

October 22, 2006

WITTs, YOYOs, and Why Americans Don't Go Green

by: Joel Makower

ecoamerica.jpgThe question of how to engage Americans on pressing environmental issues is a perennial one. Arguably, environmental activist groups haven't made much traction. After more than 35 years since the birth of the modern environmental movement, the major green nonprofits cumulatively engage only 3 million to 4 million Americans -- the roughly 1% of Americans who appear on the groups' mailing lists.

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Growth Champions

by: Jon Miller

Strategy+Business had a great article in their summer issue by Edward Landry, Andrew Tipping, and Jay Kumar from the consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton.

Continue reading "Growth Champions" »

October 21, 2006

Geek Marketing 101

by: Guy Kawasaki 

I found a great blog entry that explains technology marketing. Here are the first three elements of this top-ten list:

Continue reading "Geek Marketing 101" »

Art-O-Meter Measures Art Popularity in Museums

by: Ilya Vedrashko

MIT Media Labman came up with Art-o-Meter -- a system apparently equipped with motion detector that counts how much time people spend in front of an art piece.

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October 20, 2006

Yet Another Segmentation Model

by: Dick Stroud 

Focalyst, a joint venture between AARP Services and Kantar, the research arm of WPP, has published its findings about the 125 million Americans, aged 42-plus segment.

Continue reading "Yet Another Segmentation Model" »

October 19, 2006

Nivea Gets Products Into Splinter Cell: Double Agent

by: Ilya Vedrashko

"Nivea Does Video Game Tie-In with 'Splinter Cell'" October 16, Enid Burns, ClickZ. The game is brand new, so no good screenshots yet. Quotes from the article:

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October 18, 2006

internet is just the world passing notes in a classroom

by: Lynette Webb

Click image to enlarge.

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October 17, 2006

this video is important

by: danah boyd

Please watch this video. It is a depiction of how beauty is crafted for print. It's made as part of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. Below are the before/after images (tx to BoingBoing).

Continue reading "this video is important" »

October 16, 2006

Reuters Opens News Center on Second Life

by: Ilya Vedrashko

Reuters opened an online center that covers news from Second Life with interviews, charts and everything.

Continue reading "Reuters Opens News Center on Second Life" »

Food Ads and Marketing to “Cravers”

by: Roger Dooley

chocolateLast May, we posted Food Ads: How Brains Respond, which discussed research showing that images of food triggered a response in the brain’s reward centers. Now, as reported in the Seattle Times in Chocolate: Love at first bite — or sight, Ciara McCabe and Edmund Rolls of Oxford University in England will present additional food image research at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience later this week.

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latest hazard is clicking under the influence

by: Lynette Webb 

 Click image to enlarge.

Continue reading "latest hazard is clicking under the influence" »

October 15, 2006

pre-election cynicism

by: danah boyd

Editorial note: On this blog, we typically don't publish elements of US political debate.  Still, some thoughts are just too powerful to ignore.  That is why - if at Futurelab we want to be true to our belief of making a difference - our rules are there to be broken.   Thank you danah for what I consider one of this blog's most powerful posts of all times, and for reminding us what it is all about (note: also here in Europe).  Alain.

Continue reading "pre-election cynicism" »

Boomer Wealth – Beware of the median

by: Dick Stroud 

If you are interested in the way that wealth is distributed among baby boomers then this is an article you should read. It is about the US but the same principles apply in all countries.

Continue reading "Boomer Wealth – Beware of the median" »

October 14, 2006

The Harley Creed

by: David Armano

...And folks wonder why Harley-Davidson is arguably one of the most successful brands ever.

Continue reading "The Harley Creed" »

a clickprint is a unique pattern

by: Lynette Webb 

Click image to enlarge5People have individual clickprints.  This is both scary - from a privacy perspective - and reassuring - from a security perspective (eg: could help to reduce online identity fraud). It might also enable some of the problems of cookies to be overcome which would thus improve user experience in terms of enabling far more refined targeting of advertising.   Click image to enlarge.

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The cure to poverty is connectivity and individual empowerment

by: John Caddell

TEDBlog has just posted a talk from Iqbal Quadir, the Bangladeshi innovator responsible for GrameenPhone, the mobile phone company that has made dramatic differences in quality of life for tens of millions of poor Bangladeshi villagers.

Continue reading "The cure to poverty is connectivity and individual empowerment" »

If the Future is Digital ...

by: Lynette Webb

click image to enlarge

... the guy with the most data wins.  (click image to enlarge)

I’m not sure who said this originally, but I heard it from Fredrick Marckini, head of iProspect (part of Isobar, the agency network I work for)… thanks Fredrick. :-)

Continue reading "If the Future is Digital ..." »

PTOMO Live -- We Are the Clutter

by: David Polinchock

Chris Weilfrom Momentum Worldwide was doing the keynote presentation entitled We are the Clutter, a challenge to the entire industry. His challenge to us was to stay on course with what we're doing and create short term opportunities or change ourselves for long term growth. According to a Yankelovich study, people believe that 60% of the messaging they receive have to relevance to them.

Continue reading "PTOMO Live -- We Are the Clutter" »

“Neuroplanning” and Neuromarketing in the Czech Republic

by: Roger Dooley

The Prague Post, a popular English-language weekly in the Czech Republic, ran both an article, Picking Your Brain, and an opinion piece, On the brains (and ethics) of neuroplanning, on the topic of neuromarketing. The former covers the launch of a neuroscience-based media planning effort being launched by European media planning firm PHD Network.

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October 13, 2006

Sustainable by Design

by: David Wigder

An Interview with Ian Yolles, VP of Marketing, Nau

What if you could build a company from the ground up, where every decision was based on the principles of sustainability? Nau is an emerging outdoor apparel company that is trying to do just that. In fact, even its corporate bylaws state that fiduciary responsibility to shareholders must be balanced by the needs of the environment.

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People Power Lands Hoff on #3

 By: Alain Thys

I promise this is the last time I post about our Knight Rider, yet as the project Hoff Alert had now managed to land this most unlikely of musical heroes on the number 3 spot in the UK, I just had to find out who was behind it.  Was it really a bunch of fans who got together ?  Or was it an innovative ploy by a record company executive looking for a fast buck ?

Continue reading "People Power Lands Hoff on #3" »

October 12, 2006

The Concept of Sustainability Part II: Addendum

by: Michael Hoexter

In my post earlier this week on the Concept of Sustainability, I left out an important bullet point. As I had thought about my post over a period of days sometimes without the help of a computer or pen and paper, I suppose it was not such a surprise that something would get left out…

Continue reading "The Concept of Sustainability Part II: Addendum" »

Eye-Tracking Research Results

by: Dick Stroud 

This article from MarketingSherpa is fascinating. It is not age specific but the general principles will apply to the 50-plus market.

Continue reading "Eye-Tracking Research Results" »