Our Future Vision

Iam often asked, "What's next?" Which technologies, just around the corner, will continue to revolutionize the way we live, communicate and sell? Given the impact of technological innovation on our industry in the past five years, this question is incredibly important. Staying ahead of the curve is critical to ongoing growth and relevance to our clients. At R/GA, we have institutionalized our grasp of the future through a variety of techniques that any agency or client organization can duplicate. We call this program "FutureVision." FutureVision taps into the interests and passions of individual employees and enables subject domain experts within our agency to inform and educate the rest of the staff, our sister agencies and our clients. Got a few rabid gamers among your staff? Harness their knowledge on where the gaming industry is headed and how it will impact marketing and communications. Do the same with your resident bloggers, downloaders and mobile early adopters. At R/GA, we track the future of digital technology in six different categories: personalization, control, peer-to-peer, experience, mobility and entertainment. For this article, we'll explore the first three. You'll have to tune in next month for the rest. By "future," I really mean things that are here today, out on the periphery, among small groups of adopters. But the periphery of today will be the mass market of tomorrow, so FutureVision helps us plan for the ever-expanding universe of user experience. As we build solutions for clients, encumbered by legacy issues and adoption rates, we also like to envision a "Version X"—the one unencumbered, the purest and best possible user experience. Even though we cannot implement all of Version X today, it often yields one or two insights that can be used currently while drawing the road map for the next version. As we track the six areas of FutureVision, we capture the trends in each on a dedicated section of the R/GA Wiki (if you do not know what a Wiki is, your first FutureVision lesson is to check out www.wikipedia.org). We also develop a set of index cards with each trend noted and URLs that demonstrate the trend catalogued. So, without further ado, the first three FutureVision categories: Personalization: Consumers no longer just consume. They want to make their mark, personalize their Web sites, customize their cars, design their own clothes. They expect targeted experiences and tools that empower their creativity. Nowhere is this more apparent than on sites like Freitag, which enables customers to design their own messenger bags from used truck tarpaulins (www.freitag.ch/f-cut), or on R/GA's NikeiD site (www.nikeid.com), enabling the custom design of a variety of shoes and athletic gear. A wide variety of Web sites allow users to customize their view (like My Yahoo!), but some take customization of design to an extreme—like the CSS Zen Garden (www.csszengarden.com). Findory (www. findory.com) enables users to build their own personalized newspapers by culling from thousands of blogs and news sites—just by watching which articles you read. Control: A corollary to personalization, control encompasses all of the technologies that help you manage your life and accomplish your tasks. Control represents the "mind-shift" to an on-demand world. Think TiVo and Blackberry, and keep on going. Want to know which song you're hearing in your local U.K. pub? Just dial up Shazam (www.shazam.com) from your cell phone. Within 30 seconds, it will "listen" to the song and send you back an SMS with the title. Now that's control. A new generation of search engines will pick up where Google leaves off in the control department. Amazon's new A9 search engine (www.a9.com) searches not only the Web (using Google) but the text of books on Amazon. Want to find video clips from your favorite TV programs and movies? Check out Blinkx (www.blinkx.tv). Peer-to-peer (P2P): P2P technologies first pierced the zeitgeist with the original Napster, whose power nearly brought down the music industry. Peer-to-peer evolved from there, enabling sharing of nearly anything digital on a global scale. The buzz is growing around P2P trends like blogging, podcasting and social networks (e.g., Friendster). Here are a few P2P extensions you probably haven't seen yet: Want to share your bookmarks with others and see which sites people with similar interests have bookmarked? Go straight to del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us). Want to monitor the buzz about your company or your product on blogs and message boards? Check out BuzzMetrics (www.buzzmetrics.com). Want to create social networks with your brand or organization at the center? Look no further than Affinity Networks (www.affinitynetworks.com). These are just a few examples of where technology is taking us. Our FutureVision compendium contains many more of each kind. Next month: FutureVision continues with explorations of experience, mobility and entertainment.

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Our Future Vision

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