103 posts categorized "Consumer Insights"
January 24, 2012
January 14, 2012
New audio / video interview on the future of branding, business and the Internet (incl. some comments on SOPA), via TribeRadio
A few days ago, I did a fairly lengthy and deep skype interview with Toronto-based Marie Germain from Branding 2.0 (see her Twitter channel here), touching on many issues including the future of commerce, selling, marketing and branding, so-called social media (I much prefer the term Social OS), current issues in technology and the Internet (such as SOPA - the deeply disturbing but nevertheless impending U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act), and media / content trends.
There are some quite juicy snippets in this interview, such as:
"In an truly digital society we probably don't need marketing as we know it"
"We are moving from a society, and an economy, based on EGOsystems to a society that is based on ECOsystems (i.e. INTERDEPENDENCE)"
"The old days of commerce were based on handcuffing consumers, now it's all about attraction, engagement and conversations (being a magnet rather than using handcuffs)"
This video uses an interesting format in that it is based on an audio track that was recorded on the phone, and superimposes some related images over it. Interesting. If you just want the audio track, here it is:
Gerd Leonhard TribeRadio Interview Jan 2012: Branding, SOPA et al
From the TribeRadio Youtube post: "World-renown futurist, Gerd Leonhard, in this interview speaks of the very serious challenges businesses and brands face; he offers solutions. On a more sombre note he exposes the ploys of controllers on internet freedom, SOPA to be clear. The Wall Street Journal acknowledges Gerd as one of the leading media futurists in the world. Powerful! Incisive! Gerd is simply delicious to the ears. Keynote Speaker, Founder of The Futures Agency, Advisor to top corporations and governments, author of five books, "The Future of Music", "Music 2.0", "The End of Control", "Friction is Fiction" and "The Future of Content". Gerd's background is in music; however, today he is a top game-changer, inspiring entrepreneurship and guiding us into a prodigious digital world. To reach the Host of Tribe Radio, Marie Germain: at her blog, http://Branding20.wordpress.com or her biz site, http://MarieGermain.com..."
Be sure to check out the other audio / video interviews on here channel as well, including Jeffrey Hayzlett ('Running the Gauntlet' book, former CMO of Kodak).
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January 12, 2012
The latest updates from my Tumblr blogs
Greetings! In addition to the blog posts on this site I also post on 2 other sites, see below.
The latest updates from my Future of Business Tumblr Blog
The latest updates from my Green Futurist Tumblr Blog
January 11, 2012
Great interview with Don Tapscott, some key insights for 2012 (video)
I have always admired Don Tapscott's work and his really powerful books (Wikinomics and the latest update, Macro-Wikinomics) which are a must-read for anyone interested in the future. In this very candid interview Don shares some great insights and realizations - well worth it!
January 07, 2012
Seth Godin on 2012: 2 must-watch videos. The industrial age is over. Take risks.
I just found this via Marie Germain and Branding 2.0: video of interview with Seth Godin on George Stroumboulopoulos “Strombo”, Canada’s leading late-night talk show. Some really great soundbites here - Seth is one of the people who always, without fail, inspire me.
Check out this video interview with Seth on BehindthebrandTV - it's a very good fit with the topics above, as well.
January 03, 2012
100 things to watch in 2012 (via JWT Intelligence)
A very meaty slideshow covering a huge number of key trends (see below... yes, it's a bit of overkill) and a pretty cool video - well worth checking out!
Access Everywhere 9. Electric Fleets 1 0. Leadership Shakeups 4 1. Rooftop Farming 6 3. Tokyo Sky Tree 8 2. Album Evolution 0. Facebook’s IPO 2 1. Lighter Cars 4 2. Roots Revival 6 4. Tom Daley 8 3. All Things Military- 1. Facial Recognition 2 2. Loosecubes 4 3. Scooter Surge 6 5. Toys for Tablets 8 Inspired Fury 3. Lytro 4 4. Screened Dining 6 6. TV Commerce 8 4. Antique Eats 2. Fat Taxes 2 4. Marques Toliver 4 5. Screened Shopping 6 7. “Ultra” 8 5. Anywhere, Any-Way 3. Flipped Classrooms 2 5. Mobile Security 4 6. Senior Cohousing 6 8. Unwrapping the 8 Shopping 4. Floating Yoga 2 Process 6. Motivational Objects 4 7. Silence 6 6. App Overload 5. For-Profit Chains, 2 9. Vdio 8 7. Mushrooms as 4 8. Silicon Valley Siblings 6 7. Apps for an Nonprofit Stores Functional Food 0. Video-grams 9 Aging World 9. Smaller SKUs 6 6. Fuel From Waste 2 8. Mushrooms Go Green 4 1. Virtual Fitting Rooms 9 8. The Attention 0. Smart Clothing 7 7. Garden Camping 2 9. Myanmar 4 2. Voice-Based 9 Economy 1. Smarter Check-ins 7 8. Gen Z 2 0. Nadine Ponce 5 Microblogging 9. Batuka 2. Social Seating 7 9. Gesture Recognition 2 1. Olympics’ New Sport 5 3. Voice Control 9 0. Benefit Corporations1 3. Solar Gets Simpler 7 0. Healthy Vending 3 2. Online Lives, in Print 5 4. Web Chat Everywhere 9 1. Book Club 2.01 Machines 4. Spiking Food Prices 7 3. P-to-P Experiences 5 5. Wii U 9 2. BYOD (Bring Your 1 1. Heirloom Everything 3 5. Split-Personality 7 Own Device) 4. The Personal Retailer 5 Smartphones 6. Women-Only Hotel 9 2. The Hobbit 3 Floors 3. Cloud Security1 5. Play as a Competitive 5 6. Stationery 7 3. Honey 3 Advantage 7. Your Public Story 9 4. Crowdsourced 1 7. Stripped-Down 7 Commutes 4. Hydration Stations 3 6. Pluerry 5 Products/Services 8. YouTube, the New 9 5. Indian E-commerce 3 Boob Tube 5. Crowdsourced 1 7. Public Bookshelves 5 8. Sundance London 7 Learning 6. Inhaling 3 9. Zimbabwe 9 8. Rainwater Harvesting 5 9. Sustainable Palm Oil 7 6. Curbing Food Waste1 7. Internet-Enabled Cars 3 1 00. Zink 9. Remaking “Made in 5 0. Tablets Replace Paper 8 7. Danger Zone Travel1 8. iTV 3 China” 1. Tap-and-Pay Incentives 8 8. Digital-Into-Physical 1 9. LCD Art 3 0. Rolling Stones’ 50th 6 Postcards 2. A Titanic Anniversary
December 31, 2011
New video: about being a Futurist, the future of education (Interview)
Uploaded by SaladaCorporativa on Dec 15, 2011 (note: these interviews are in English)
Video em inglês. Nesse vídeo Gerd Leonhard, autor, palestrante, CEO da The Future Agency e Professor convidado da Fundação Dom Cabral fala sobre o que o é um futurista, a carreira e a profissão de um futurista e tendências para a educação no mundo.
November 21, 2011
New video: TeleMedia Futures presentation at Total Telecom 2011 (London)
This is a self-recorded video of my keynote speech on 'TeleMedia Futures: Making the most of the Content Opportunity' at the recent Total Telecom conference in London, Nov 7 / 8, 2011. Apologies for the somewhat less than perfect recording quality (note that the crackling sound that starts at about 2 mins into the video will seize a minute later:). You can download the PDF of my presentation here: Download TeleMedia and Content Gerd Leonhard Total Telecom Public
More presentations (100+) can be viewed and downloaded via Slideshare
October 28, 2011
New video: Visions of a Networked Future at ITU Telecom World
Below is a 10-minute video excerpt from a really interesting session at ITU Teleworld 2011 in Geneva yesterday, October 26, 2011. http://forum.world2011.itu.int/sessions/f17-storytelling-2-visions-of-a-netwo... has further details and the complete 86 minute video.
This Quickfire Storytelling session brings together some of the world's leading futurists (see below) to share bold ideas and conflicting predictions of how the world might look in 10 years' time. This video (which we shot ourselves using a Kodak HDCam and Sony bluetooth mic) shows the first 10 minutes i.e. Gerd's introduction, the 5 minute talk and brief discussion with the other speakers and the audience. Twitter buzz is here
You can download the 10MB PDF of my presentation (unfortunately, the slides are not visible in the video), here.
More details on the other panelists





Gerd Leonhard, CEO, The Futures Agency
Rachel Armstrong, Senior TED Fellow, Senior Lecturer, University of Greenwich
Simon Torrance, Founder 2.0 Initiative, and Chief Executice Officer, STL Partners
Juliana Rotich, CEO, Ushahidi Inc.
Rohit Talwar, CEO, Fast Future
This is the audio-only version (right-click to save the MP3)
Gerd Leonhard Futurist at ITU Teleworld 2012
October 25, 2011
The impact of the iPod (Mashable), me: "genius of fake-control model"
Amy-Mae Elliott interviewed my for this nice Mashable piece the other day. Here are some good snippets from me and from others that were interviewed:
Leander Kahney, editor of Cult of Mac and author of The Cult of iPod, sees the iPod’s primary impact in terms of the “connected device. “Gadgets are no longer stand-alone products,” Kahney says, “they connect to a range of software and online services. Think Internet TVs, stereos like Sonos, handheld gaming devices, GPS bike computers, in-car stereos, high-end watches, Internet radios, even printers — the list goes on and on — and the iPod was the first to do that...."
...Wikström says one could argue that iTunes has been more a hindrance to the industry than a help. Despite the billions of sales using the platform, the music industry has still suffered over the past decade. Did the dominant iTunes business model blind the industry to alternatives? “iTunes prolonged the industry’s dependence on the old model, and made them believe that it actually might be possible just to shift from CD to MP3, just as they had done in the past when they moved from vinyl to tape to CD,” says Wikström. “This is just speculation, but perhaps the most important impact on the music industry is that iTunes delayed the shift from a retail model based on control to what we now start to see emerge as various kinds of cloud-based retail models, such as Spotify and its peers.”
Futurist Gerd Leonhard, author of The Future of Content and co-author of The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution also sees iTunes playing a part in the decline of the music industry. “The genius of the iPod was (and still is, with the iPhone) that, while the music industry actually believed that it had found a good (i.e., closed and controlled) way to extract money from otherwise freeloading consumers, the iTunes/iPod/iPhone ecosystem became the dominant hardware solution for the consumption of free music.” |itunes / control image added by Gerd, source unknown |
October 24, 2011
Announcing my new Kindle book "The Future of Content"
Today is a very big day for me. My new Kindle book "The Future of Content" just went online at Amazon, and is already gaining a lot of traction. You can view a very short video greeting about the book on my GerdTube channel (Youtube:)
Of course I would be very happy if you would consider buying the book for yourself (only $3.90, Kindle-only) but beyond that it would be really great if you could help me spread the word via rating and / or 'liking' the book on the Amazon.com page, tweeting about it or just forwarding this mail to some friends that may be interested.
As you probably know, I have published my last 3 books as free pdfs (which are quite popular) but really wanted to try something new with this book; after all reading on the Kindle is a much better experience than reading a PDF, and thus is, to quote Kevin Kelly, one of those "New Generatives" :)
"The future of content" will also be available in dead-tree-versions aka print, via my Lulu store, soon - please stay tuned. Happy reading!
Gerd Leonhard
(Media Futurist and CEO of The Futures Agency),
Basel / Switzerland
http://twitter.com/#!/gleonhard
My public Amazon / Kindle profile
(sharing all my book highlights there)
Update October 25 2011: this nice review may be helpful:
"I challenge you to expand your brain and read this book. What Gerd Leonhard is always doing is informing the global brain (or the collective brain) in ways that help us all get where we're trying to go. He builds the buildings in front of us.
This collection points toward several compelling answers for content creators. As a writer who is already swimming in the changing currents of "content," I found it intensely informative. Leonhard shores up my courage to continue embracing a digital world without DRM, and ebook prices "for the masses." He makes the all-important concept of curation crystal clear. If you are providing any kind of content in print or on the web, it's relevant. If you want to stay on the front edge of content creation and publishing, it's basic. I'm making this book mandatory reading for my epublishing circles"
Amazon Kindle German Store
Amazon Kindle French Store
Amazon Kindle UK Store
ABOUT "THE FUTURE OF CONTENT"
Futurist Gerd Leonhard has been writing about the future of content i.e. music, film, TV, books, newspapers, games etc, since 1998. He has published 4 books on this topic, 2 of them on music (The Future of Music, with David Kusek, and Music 2.0). For the past 10 years Leonhard has been deeply involved with many clients in various sectors of the content industry, in something like 17 countries, and it’s been a great experience, he says. “I have learned a lot, I have listened a lot, I have talked even more (most likely:) and I think I have grown to really understand the issues that face the content industries - and the creators, themselves - in the switch from physical to digital media.”
This Kindle book is a highly curated collection of the most important essays and blog posts Leonhard has written on this topic, and even though some of it was written as far back as 2007 - “I believe it still holds water years later. I have tried to only include the pieces that have real teeth. Please note that the original date of each piece is shown here in order to allow for contextual orientation.” Leonhard’s intent to publish this via the amazing Amazon Kindle platform, exclusively, and at a very low price, is to make these ideas and concepts as widely available as possible while still trying to be an example of what digital, paperless distribution can look like, going forward.
October 23, 2011
5* video: Kevin Kelly on the future of the Internet: screening, interacting, sharing, flowing, generating
Kevin Kelly is a major influence on my work, and this video from Wired's Network conference is one of his best. Dive in and you'll see why. All of his books are worth reading, as well.
October 21, 2011
New video: the Future of Content, my Keynote at Colombia 3.0 (SPANISH)
Here are both parts (90 minutes plus 35 minutes) of my keynote speech on The Future of Content at Colombia 3.0 October 7 2011 see http://www.colombiatrespuntocero.com
The panel discussion afterwards can be viewed here, as well (all in Spanish). Note: even though I am actually presenting in English the overdup is Spanish and very much in the foreground. I will try and get an English version, as well - stay tuned.
files.me.com/gleonhard/gi5dw0 has the PDF with the slides using during the talk (i.e. most of them) Thanks to MINTIC for making this video available. For more context read http://www.mintic.gov.co/index.php/mn-news/469-20111008gerd
Related: check out my new Kindle book "The Future of Content"
El suizo GerlLeonhard, líder futurólogo experto en modelos de comercio electrónico, medios de comunicación e innovación fue el encargado del cierre de la Primera Cumbre Nacional de Contenidos Digitales, Colombia 3.0, realizada por el Ministerio TIC entre el 5 y el 8 de octubre. Después de cuatro días de análisis en los que se reunieron emprendedores, inversionistas, animadores, desarrolladores de aplicación y representantes de la industria de los contenidos digitales del mundo terminó Colombia 3.0. En la cumbre participaron 30 conferencistas nacionales y 50 internacionales, quienes se reunieron en 14 eventos simultáneos.Las distintas actividades y conferencias fueron seguidas en línea en 23 ciudades del país y 15 países. De igual manera se tuvo la participación de Siggraph, una asociación mundial de animación gráfica y técnicas interactivas, espacio en que 19 expertos en animación compartieron sus experiencias exitosas en las firmas más importantes del mundo de esta industria. Bogotá 7 de octubre de 2011.En su intervención GerlLeonhard, realizó un detallado análisis de los cambios que han sufrido los medios tradicionales al migrar a los medios sociales como Facebook, Twitter y otras redes sociales. Además,Leonhard anotó que en la actualidad se vive una cultura de la banda ancha y son los “prosumidores”, consumidores activos, los que producen contenidos digitales.
Mencionó el experto suizo que el mundo digital está regido por la relevancia y no solamente por la distribución, según Leonhard, los contenidos digitales deben ser depurados antes de ser distribuidos a los distintos públicos y subrayó que la nueva economía digital que se está viviendo en la actualidad debe iniciarse desde Internet y especialmente desde los dispositivos móviles. Anotó también Leonhard, que el usuario es quien genera los contenidos digitales en la actualidad através de distintos dispositivos móviles. En su intervención, señaló además que la tendencia actual se desarrolla a través de lo móvil, lo social y lo local. Ademásindicó, en este sentido,que para el 2015se esperaque 7.1 trillones de dispositivos móviles sean usados en el mundo.
October 19, 2011
Mobile advertising must be content-based (review of my talk at MMA Forum in Sao Paulo
RCR Wireless has collected some good snippets from my talk at the Mobile Marketing Association Forum in Sao Paulo, yesterday (download the 15MB high.res pdf here):
"Futurist and author Gerd Leonhard explained during a keynote address today at the Mobile Marketing Association Forum in São Paulo that customer trust was vital. “If we don’t trust Google, Twitter, Facebook, we leave them and they will die,” Leonard said. However, the key pillar to a solid strategy of mobile marketing is a focus on content. “Advertising is becoming content, marketing is curation, mobile is empowerment, brands are publishers, marketers become storytellers and consumers are participants,” explained Leonhard.
The future passes through the end of “mass-anything” and marketing has been dramatically impacted by the increased role of technology. “There is no difference between online and offline. Disconnected screens will be the exception, they will disappear,” said Leonhard. With all devices connected, network traffic will explode. All of this will culminate in changing how companies approach their mobile strategy. The point is how they will interact with customers. “If you want to succeed you have to give them control, as much as you can. Customers will love you,” Leonhard said, adding that empowerment, participation and engagement are the key points..."
See the Twitter buzz from the event, during my talk















Green Futurist