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Living in a real-time world, the future seems to be happening in front of our eyes at such a dizzying pace, it's tough to make sense of it all.

GBN is a Northern California think-tank that's been making sense of the future for decades. They were even consultants on movie "The Minority Report" and came up with many of the ideas for the technology that's in the movie. I guess they saw gestural computing and touch-screens before any one else.

The way they come up with their thinking is through a technique they call "Scenario Planning". it was developed by GBN founder, Peter Schwartz back when he worked at Shell and used to predict the first oil crisis in the early 70s.

The graphic above is from a report commissioned by The Rockefeller Foundation from GBN to examine the impact of technology on international development.

No one knows what the future holds, so pretending you do is worthless, but it's also foolish for corporations and institutions to ignore the future.

Scenario Planning is a way to create a framework for a conversation about the issues by exploring and delivering a number of potential futures.

With each possible future, GBN creates narratives that look 20 years ahead and personas for specific "actors".

"The scenarios that follow are not meant to be exhaustive—rather, they are designed to be both plausible and provocative, to engage your imagination while also raising new questions  for you about what that future might look and feel like."

In this report, you can see GBN has looked at the angles that surround the issues of technology today that include; privacy, control, collaboration, interaction, hacking, security threats, hacking and DIY.

While not many of us have the luxury or even the need to think 20 years ahead for our clients, there's no reason why, we shouldn't be creating short-term scenarios, given how unpredictable the short-term future is.


Posted by Ed Cotton Everyday it seems like a new canvas emerges that could provide a potential opportunity for engagement. Faced with the rapid pace of change, we sometimes forget about how we can use the technology that already exists, but in a better way.

A great example is how Arcade Fire, them again!, thought about the integration of art for the digital format. Understanding that the richness of the LP experience had long gone, they wondered how there might be greater interaction between music and art in the MP3 world. Their designer came up with a smart solution that has the potential to continually enhance the experience.



While the "sexy" thing might have been to develop on iPad application, this solution demonstrates an understanding of the "gap" that exists with existing technology in the user experience that can easily be enhanced with a little thought.

Via Creative Review

Posted by Ed Cotton There's a great film going around the web right now, that's basically a recruitment ad for Twitter.

It's probably the first piece of communication the brand has done and it gives a real flavor of the place, it's people and its culture. It's also pretty cool, ripping off a scene from the movie Rushmore and the music.

While most brands think primarily about their customers, most forget there's a talent war going on and do little to present themselves in an interesting way, beyond the usual job fair recruitment round.

Twitter shows it gets the people it wants to recruit, by showing the spirit of the internal community it clearly communicates that it has got something over on the likes of Facebook and Google. This is talent who values community, almost as much as opportunity.



Posted by Ed Cotton Pepsi must have dozens of agencies working on its behalf to bring it new ideas on a regular basis, but it appears the brand isn't content relying on these guys for its tech ideas, so it's created its own forum for technologists to bring their ideas directly to the brand.

The PepsiCo 10 is a two-day event, today is day two, where an invited set of tech companies get a shot at presenting their ideas to the company.

Here's how they describe it.

"PepsiCo will to bring together PepsiCo brand marketers, venture capital and media partners, category specialists and thought leaders for a two-day idea exchange on media, communications and technology.

The group will assess presentations from 20 finalist entrepreneurs and choose the PepsiCo10 from among them. Up to 10 entrepreneurs will be named the PepsiCo10 following the Summit's end and offered the opportunity to pursue a pilot project with a PepsiCo brand team.

In addition to entrepreneur presentations and judging, the PepsiCo10 Summit will include keynote addresses from top media, communications and technology visionaries."

As you can see from this video- the initiative is being driven by Pepsi's media, social media and digital technology guys.

It's interesting to see a brand make such direct moves and it's not doing it alone- helping them are; Mashable (for the coverage carrot) and Highland Capital Partners (for that all important cash).

Clearly there's a lesson here for agencies to find forums and opportunities to bring the best external thinking in the rapidly developing tech space to their clients attention

Posted by Ed Cotton Recent rumors circulating in the news media suggest that HP could be ready to kill the Palm brand, or move it into the background.

Obviously, Palm had some cool technology and an operating system that could be of use to HP, but isn't the fact Palm isn't HP, interesting?

HP has spent millions on trying to make its brand cool and despite the Gwen Stefani sponsorship deals and Jay Z ads, it hasn't quite bridged the gap, it still seems like a stodgy, solid engineering company.

In a world where consumer electronics/phones and other gadgets are ostensibly fashion items, it's tough for HP to play effectively in this space.

Given that Apple is cool, surely HP could use some of its own?

I am not saying Palm was the coolest brand on the planet, but it was different and had an unusual take on the user experience. It also had a devoted army of loyalists who had worshiped the brand through thick and thin.

Again, when engineers and bean counters look at the issue, it's easy to vote for efficiencies and there's also a very subjective belief that the parent brand is better.However, given the complexities and challenges of this dynamic marketplace, HP could be making a mistake not re-energizing the Palm brand and putting some new meaning behind it.


Posted by Ed Cotton It's hard to compare because obviously some of IT expenditure is marketing related, but the data shown here from Andrew MCaffe's HBR article is staggering.



Companies have been investing in IT at an amazing rate, in just 13 years, expenditure grew by over 500%.

We should ask ourselves how did IT get a seat at the boardroom table?

How did IT prove its ROI?

How did IT get consistent budget increases?

Marketing could clearly use some of IT's secrets- proof of concept and a seat at the boardroom table are two key areas.

However, perhaps in the near future, marketers instead of thinking of IT as competition, need to become better at aligning with their IT counterparts to better prove their case and to bring integrated solutions.


Posted by Ed Cotton