© Sydney A

Syndicated as a guest post originally from Lisa Hickey’s The Hurricane Inside My Brain

The title of the article is meant to invoke a sense of what is to come, not to just talk about advertising but branding and marketing.

In this article I’ll take a look at what I feel is coming down the pipeline for these areas. The future isn’t set in stone and neither are these predictions. Companies are already starting to track your habits. In the future it will just get more intuitive.

Extreme personalization

Companies will start utilizing your tracking data not only to target you at point of purchase but to craft full experiential life profiles for you. You will also offer up information that is more personal/emotional that can not be tracked, that exists inside you. Think of this as your Personal Purchasing Profile (3P), completely tailored to your every desire.

Imagine if you will a 3P that lists everything and anything you or anyone else would ever want to know about you. With the 3P there will not only be breadth but depth too. All nuances will be delved into as well as all areas you could ever want or know. Your 3P will be segmented into different areas with different permissions for them. Settings will be on a sliding scale of privacy with how much and what you want to share with who.

Hyper specific communications

Companies will be able to tell who, what, where, when and why you are. You heard me- WHY you are.

Geolocation technology is being popularized now, especially in mobile technologies such as the iPhone. Mobile providers know where you are at all times even without this just by triangulating your position. All of these 5W’s will be cross checked with your 3P to accurately pinpoint what is going on with you at every single exact moment of your life. This integration of brands into your life will happen in a non-intrusive way that enhances your experiences.

Relevantly aggregated information

Information, regardless of sender, will be aggregated into relevant channels. Whatever criteria you preset as a favorite to watch out will be cross checked against infinite amounts of data. Priority will be given to companies who sponsor keywords to target you in the keyplaces and keytimes they’ve chosen.

Amount- speed and velocity

You will choose how much and how fast you receive sponsored results. This will be on a targeted grid that will form more of a web in 3-dimensional space rather than a sliding scale. Linear will be replaced with the multi-spacial for targeting and graphing, as the sheer amount of information will scoff in the face of two directions and two dimensions.

Easter eggs and planned obsolescence

Targeted ads will surprise you at specific locations as you pass them. They will also come seemingly out of nowhere when you must ‘act now’ because there is a limited amount of time to take advantage of the offer.

Multimedia convergence

Advertisements tend to be very linear depending on their channel of delivery. Print is print; video is video. Companies will begin to focus on the immersive experience where many different technologies and multimedia will come together to create a wholly enriched environment. Think all of your senses as well as inner aspects of you being engaged fully.

Intuitive suggestion and prediction

Building on top of your wants, needs, desires and purchases will be a system for accurately predicting what you will want before you even know you want it. Suggesting of similar products will become more fine tuned to the nuances of categories so instead of someone offering you another type of thing from the category you will now be offered something exactly like the first thing PLUS something that builds on all the characteristics of what you covet. The prediction technology will take into account your patterns, trends occurring and the details of what you like to accurately tell you what you will like.

Choose your own adventure

There are so many companies out there now it can be confusing. You will see detailed lists of companies where you can opt-out of them or their specific service promotions for a set period of time. This will add to your 3P where you effectively choose certain products and companies over others. Companies will take advantage of this to purchase your favor.

Non-traditional synergies

Besides aligning with obvious partners, companies will start to partner with others who don’t normally fit their pattern of business interaction. Ranging from individuals and customer groups to completely out of the ballpark product categories, businesses will start to focus on values and emotions for a mutual engagement plan as opposed to focusing on benefits and features currently.

Automatic feed channels

You can already receive multimedia and news feeds by signing up for them. Multimedia and advertisements will come to a place where they will use your 3P to send things AUTOMATICALLY to you based on a variety of factors- time of day, location, who you are with, state of mind/emotions, weather, breaking news etc. Multimedia and companies will communicate with each other behind the scenes to make your automatic feed channel a smoother experience. Whatever synergies they can find in your life as well as between both of their content they will align them in your feed so you don’t have to.

Life sponsors

Mining information from your 3P, companies will hyper target situations in your life to more accurately serve you. They may even pay you to have the privilege to sponsor that moment of your life. It may range from an extremely important moment where  you may want your favorite company involved to something fleeting where you may not care about companies being involved. It comes down to your outlook on certain companies and situations as well as what your 3P says about you. An Evangelist is more likely to have their favorite brand be a major part of a family function. A Casual Consumer is more likely to have a helpful brand around any random time that isn’t of any particular value to them.

These are just some of my thoughts where I see the future of how brands will fit into our lives. Information is coming harder and faster every day. Pretty soon the signal will turn to noise. Out of this noise you will see technologies emerge to turn the noise back to a highly focused clean signal. Things are getting better every day. Pay attention to the signs.