Day one...

The brief is up.

Ok so now my scifi background is going crazy, my first thought was "2020? we'll all be blatantly sporting mohawks and one sleeved leather jackets, driving the last of the V8s through a Zombie infested wasteland, with Chernobyl in the background and the only brands around would be throwback 1950s colas... either that or the machines would have gently sung us into extinction with Daisy Bell" (how many cult references did you and Burt the turtle get kids?).
But I must be less pessimistic (and paranoid) and assume that the human race and its ancestors is going to do what it's done for the last 6 million years and that is fumble though the next ten years despite our own best efforts to: Shoot. Starve. Suffocate. Poison. Mutate. Explode. Drown. & suck ourselves into a Swiss black hole.

...What was that idea about uploading your consciousness after death onto the Internet to have it downloaded into the latest Toyota model?...

So the brief raises a few questions I've got to answer. That's a good place to start seeing as i know NOTHING about branding theory to speak of, hopefully this project will be a learning curve for me.

• How will today’s brands evolve and adapt to a changing world in he future?
  
• What trends, technologies and factors will influence them?
  
• How will they behave and communicate?
  
• Where will they stretch to in terms of their offer?
  
• How will they remain leaders at what they do and will retaining leadership mean becoming leader at something else?

I also need to come up with a scenario of the future, even with the exponential growth of technological advancement i doubt it'll be that different, Teleporting postal services come to mind or perhaps whole worlds in virtual space? I mean who would Ikea sell its furniture board units too if we all lived in secondlife? The brand would really have to radicalise its way of thinking to operate in a user created community. I think I'm onto something here I'll definitely return to it.

I also think brands could be more. Obviously the visual aspect comes into play, the logo for example, but what about sound as with the Intel Inside Chime? or perhaps smell or the feel of a brand? The postal service could smell of brown paper as part of its branding and the new fall collection could feel like rain just before a storm on an autumns evening. What if Rowntrees could provoke the emotion you felt at your 5th In birthday as the jelly was brought to the table?

In the future branding might have to take on a personality as it interacts within social networks.

Which brings me nicely too...

tj -x-