One of the major benefits of my line of work is that I get to work with a lot of amazing people from all over the world. They are consultants, designers, copywriters, strategists, marketing managers, logistics experts, event people, translators, web developers and all kinds of other specialists. Here are three of the more impressive people I’ve had the benefits of working with so far:

Magnus Lindkvist – Trendspotter, Strategist & Professional Speaker (Sweden)

Trendspotter, brand strategist and speaker of the year in Sweden 2009 Magnus Lindkvist is a one of a kind personality. He’s big, loud, intense and always carries either a big smile or a concerned analytical look that mostly resembles a human supercomputer. Magnus can see the matrix.

I worked with Magnus during my time at Identity Works in Stockholm and had some of the best strategy discussions I’ve had to date. Magnus has also been a great mentor for my own career as a speaker.

If you ever get the opportunity to sit down for a coffee with Magnus (could be hard as he does a couple of hundred lectures per year, including TED 2009) you are more likely to learn something about yourself than about the world. That’s how he approaches things. And that is also what makes him interesting. As a trendspotter, he will try to make you see for yourself rather than telling you what the future will be.

If you have the chance, go listen to one of Magnus’ talks and check out his book “Everything We Know is Wrong – a Trendspotter’s Handbook”.

Stefan Sagmeister – Designer (Austria/USA)

If you’re even remotely interested in design, Stefan Sagmeister doesn’t need any further introduction. He’s one of the great graphic designers of our time, and also one of the easiest people to work with that I’ve met. During a very intense two day workshop in New York a few weeks back we got more work done than I have in a long time, and what I realized is that there is a very productive and rare combination in being a great listener and being very clear in voicing your opinions. And being fun to be around. This is what Stefan is, and it’s a winning combination.

Stefan’s work includes stuff for Lou Reed, Rolling Stones, Adobe, Talking Heads and much much more. He’s also a frequent TED speaker with three different appearances to his credit.

Markku Mäntymaa – Producer (Finland)

You may not have heard of Markku. Yet. And he’s the only one of these three people who hasn’t spoken at TED. Yet. I traveled to Manila in the Philippines with Markku for an amazing week of work where we tried to figure out how on earth to pull off one of the most challenging tasks in my career, and he pulled through meeting after meeting like a machine with seemingly endless energy. I guess it figures that it is this guy who pulled off to get permissions for and produce an extreme sports event for Red Bull on… wait for it… Red Square in Moscow! How many producers do you know who could do that? Not many. I promise you. This is a hard working guy. The fact that he’s also a professional drummer with 20 or so years experience just makes him even cooler.

Money is important to us. Control over our life situation is too. But then, how can we possibly accept Internet banks as they are today. How can we possibly think that it’s okay to, say, not be able to get a visual overview analysis of our expenses and incomes? How can we possibly put up with the long and complicated OCR-numbers or basic search functionality? And how is it possible that we have such user hostile login procedures?

I can’t present all my ideas for my perfect Internet banking experience in just one post, but I can show you three examples of what Internet banking would look like if I had my say, and also what I think it will look like in just a couple of years. Here we go!

Facebook Secure Connect

Logging in to your Internet bank today is more or less of a hassle depending on your particular bank, but it’s nevertheless a hassle. Banks have been lagging behind the times here, focusing on security, but not on usability. The market forces will inevitably push us closer to an optimal trade off between security and usability. We see people leaving their bank today, simply because the login security solution is too complex (using USB-hardware for example).

To creatively solve this problem outside identification providers will step in. On of those will be Facebook. Our online identity is contained in our Facebook accounts, our Google Profiles, Twitter accounts and other services that we haven’t even learned the names of yet. We have come to trust them for logging in to other services now, and since more advanced transactions are taking place using this login by the minute (buying major chunks of advertising for example), a need for more secure identification procedures will arise. A second version of Facebook Connect called Facebook Secure Connect will be launched using secure authorization technology and will eventually be adopted by the banks. One bank will lead this evolution and the others will be both inspired and forced to follow.

Facebook will lead the way in this development, but Google will be quick to follow. To compete with Facebook, Google will go on a marketing rampage for secure OpenID and couple with Google Budget Analytics:

Google Budget Analytics

The amount of control you have over your budget and cash flow today at your ordinary Internet bank is really a joke. You get a list of your transactions and not much else. Besides that, it’s also really messy to go back and check out your history. My own bank has recently made it possible to export to Excel XLS-format, but give me a break – XLS? In 2010?

Instead, when you log in to your bank using secure OpenID all transactions will automatically be indexed, fully searchable and categorized. You will be able to analyze your economy at all levels from the very basic (cigarettes, food, rent) to the very advanced with cluster analysis, seasonal trends, forecasts and goal tracking.

In step two, Google will also launch Google Budget Analytics For Business where you can do your books and account distributions more or less automatically. This will kick ass for small businesses.

Facebook’s reply to this will be to enable sharing services where you can share selected transactions and events in your feed, much like what Blippy does today. Come to think of it, Facebook will probably buy Blippy.

Open Banking API

Finally, banks will realize that they are best at doing what banks do, and will hand over interface design and function to the experts. Banks will release secure API-sets to allow third party specialized internet bank companies to connect to their systems. This will in turn open up the market for hardcore competition. Google will be way ahead already and will release Google Bank which will be an big expansion of Google Budget Analytics. Here, they will also have tight integration with Google Spreadsheets, and will also allow for seamless integration with Google Chat, Google Voice and Gmail for interacting with your bank’s customer service.

And what about Apple – the self proclaimed customer experience rulers of the universe? They won’t remain on the sidelines for long.

Man, I wish I had the cash to go into this one myself. Call me if you know any investors who would like to change the world with me on this one.

Update: Interesting link about the poor quality of internet banking (in Swedish).

When I went to ad-school I felt that the school was in many respects molding people into replicas of what ad-people were supposed to be. Now I feel that this is perhaps about to change. The other day I got interview questions from Hyper Island regarding digital trends, and today I got another question from Berghs School of Communication regarding “what the world will look like in 25 years“. And despite the fact that a question like that is hopeless in terms of giving the correct answer, I can try to provide some humble thoughts on the subject.

First, the world will be what we make it. That may sound like an empty phrase, but it’s really quite the opposite. It is a way of living, of working, of acting, and of thinking. If you live by this belief, make decisions and take action, this will not be an empty phrase, but the best estimate of the future that we can produce.

But aside from this answer, I will try to give you an answer to your question that is a little more pragmatic. Looking at what communications will look like in 25 years we can try on two scenarios.

In scenario 1 we make the internet asymmetrical. We let legislation rule what can and cannot be sent across the internet. Material which is not permitted (like “pirated” information for example) will move underground and will be sent using stealth technology. Much of the information flow of the internet will be encrypted jibberish, undecipherable for any sense-making technology wanting to make use of it and invisible to human senses that could otherwise have been used for collaborative sense-making and coordinated collective intelligence.

The goals of those wanting to control certain information based on their nostalgia of the times when they had a lucrative monopoly on distribution will not be reached because of ever improving speed and convenience of stealth technology. Instead, the huge resources that will be put into creating these technologies (love of music for instance is a powerful incentive) will be of great benefit to those who have truly evil intentions but smaller resources, notably terrorists and criminals. Since the only way of stopping “piracy” will be to do so at the infrastructure level (service providers can be real and effective gatekeepers!) this is where we’ll eventually end up, banning encrypted traffic altogether. And presto! The internet as we know it is destroyed.

Also in this asymmetrical scenario, we will start charging for the use of bandwidth. Me, being a strong believer in free markets and competition, opposing this kind of asymmetrical access to the internet based on resources may sound incongruent, but it really isn’t. Much in the same way roads and  equality to the law are the basis for efficient competition (imagine the transaction costs of paying different prices for different levels of use of different roads), I think that access to the internet should be considered public infrastructure that will benefit competition, production, innovation, and market efficiency. But in the asymmetrical scenario, this will not be true anymore, and instead old business models and old distribution monopolies can be recreated by content companies using their funds to squat certain infrastructure lines and only provide access to their content through these. This may perhaps sound fair, but what will happen is that the abundance paradigm of the internet, the free flow of information, the “to each according to his ability” (the reverse of the famously Marxist slogan), and the rise of man through collective intelligence will stop.

I’m an optimist. I don’t think that this will happen.

In scenario 2 we retain the symmetry of the internet. We treat it like infrastructure in place to make markets and information flow efficient. Like a great system of streets and water pipes. In this scenario innovation will flourish because we can all do what we have always done, build on each others innovations, but we can do it with unprecedented efficiency. We can try and fail to a very low cost, we can learn from the mistakes of others, which boosts human efficiency enormously. This increase in efficiency, just like earlier technology leaps such as industrial farming, will create vast amounts of cognitive surplus that we can use for further innovation and production. Note that even resources that seem to be wasted on chatting with friends and Twittering create value in the form of information coordination and add to the collective intelligence. We can learn how people talk, we can cluster information, we can find new synergies and draw new conclusions.

Gossip will become hugely more efficient in this transparent world of efficient communication. This will lead to vengeance and gratitude being distributed with much more precision in answer to bad or good behavior and will make us all behave better and cheat less.

Digitally replicable products will not be products, they will be marketing for products where there is still tension between supply and demand. Musicians will try to get their music redistributed as quickly and widely as possible in order to fill venues and cut deals with brands, authors will do the same with their audiobooks to get speaking opportunities and sell hardcovers, filmmakers will use their films as vehicles for brand building and profit off of their brand, while also providing vehicles for other brands. Ludicrous legislation regarding this will be laughed at in 25 years. So will the crude methods of product placement of our age. The cinema experience cannot be pirated and we will see huge product development in terms of widening this experience. Their temporary monopoly on the film itself has made them lazy in this respect.

There will not be a difference between our digital identity and our physical one. All interaction with us will be permission based, and we will grant permission to those that we like and receive value from. Interuption marketing will be long since dead. The notion of publicly reachable phone numbers and email adresses will be laughed at as cute relics of the past. Our identity will be our identity and we will call people, not numbers, by whatever means is most efficient at the time, voice, video, text, images. By default our precense in the digital and analogue world will be publicly available. The benefits of this will outweigh the drawbacks. At times we will switch this off, just like we close the door when we want to sleep.

The semantic web will be obvious, and we’ll look back at how the internet was and smile at how we had so many copies of everything and how inefficient everything was. Of course each object will only be available in one absolute, so that any update will only have to be done once. Of course each of these will contain data representations fit for each semantic understanding of that particular data. We will be able to search, deploy scripts to ask questions and make calculations, and switch between real time representations and the historic dimension. This will all be very intuitive.

Since you are asking me to describe what the world will look like in 25 years, it is a bit ambitious to think that one blog post will answer it all, but these are some ideas of how things will be. If that’s what we decide to make them into. Because still, I think that my first answer is the best one – the world will be what we make it.

I can now announce with great pride that I will be speaking at the Bring Dialogue Conference in Strömstad this summer. The topic will be how social media impacts strategies for other media channels, and it’s a topic which engages me deeply.

Other speakers of the conference include business rock stars like professors Micael Dahlén and Kjell A. Nordström, both of Stockholm School of Economic; trendspotter Magnus Lindkvist (who got a 7.4 average rating on a 7 point scale at last years conference), and many others. Needless to say, I’m very flattered by the invitation and very excited to speak in the company of these great minds.

Check out the entire list of speakers here, and why not register for the event while you’re at it. It’s going to be a great couple of days from what I can tell!

I think the Siftables demo at Ted is just incredibly cool. As much as I love computers, I’ve never really come to terms with the user interface. It’s just not physical enough for me. Sure, I’ve tried Wacom tablets and what have you, but it’s just not enough.

The same way we saw Nintendo turn gaming into a physical actitivity, we’ll see computer based work take the same path. It has to move in that direction. People are not designed to move around a little mouse with one hand and type on little keys all day.

Siftables is one step in this direction. I’m not sure yet exactly which jobs would be the right ones for this particular solution, but instantly I can se music sequencers and other music software like Reason or Logic using this (part of the demo touches upon this). Programming drum machines using Siftables could probably be very intuitive.

I’m surprised that not more research is being done in this area. It’s an absolutely huge market. And then we haven’t even started talking about the health benefits of actually being physically active at work.

Will Nintendo design our future workspace? If they do, I’ll be first in line to buy stock.

The other day i wrote about Donny Deutsch’s book Often Wrong, Never in Doubt. Today I started flipping trough the pages written by another of advertising’s greats, David Ogilvy, in 1983. (*Interesting fact: Both Donny and his dad used to work for Ogilvy, and apparently Deutsch Sr. had a beef with David).

Anyway, the two books can really not be compared, but it’s striking how no-nonsense the Ogilvy book is, how warmly he talks about testing campaigns and readable the book is. This is truly the original planner/creative, and I must say I’m impressed.

And while I think that Ogilvy may be old-school and arguably would have difficulties developing an intuition for social media (a general difficulty for those with few friends who are active users of such media) and youth trends, he is a master of the psychology of gut feeling. David also writes:

“I run the risk of being denounced by the idiots who hold that any advertising technique which has been in use for more than two ears is ipso facto obsolete”

And I ask myself; have I been one of those idiots? Well – at least I’ve not been paying enough attention to the underlying thinking of people like Ogilvy or Bernbach. I’ve been the rebelling teenage kid, and I know from experience that it is an unavoidable phase in anything I set out to do. I’ve been a dogmatic futurist and exclusive believer of “new” psychology and new technology, but I (with the assistance of David) am starting to shift my stance. The true winners will be those with an understanding for what’s next, but also a firm grasp on the craftsmanship, the no-nonsense businessmanship, the devilish attention to detail of people like David Ogilvy. Not many people can combine Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (or rather David Ogilvy & Chris Anderson) within themselves, but if I have one mission in this career, making that fusion is it.
Wish me luck.

(Oh, and by the way, when reading I have a habit of marking pages that I find interesting. After flipping through the first ten pages of Ogilvy’s On Advertising, is this a good indication of how good I think this book is?)

Last Sunday I read in the morning newspaper DN about a “trend”. The writer said we were all going towards a trend of “cocooning” and cozyness, away from the hectic big city life, the dirty martinis and early morning afterparties. Examples of this “coming trend” would be new cozy-brands like Filippa K Ease and such.

I can’t help thinking the article perhaps said more about the writers current life situation than global trends. Because really – cozy is so last season, and urbanity is the new black.

Think about it. Yeah, having a house in suburbia, slobbing around in your dirty sweatpants (they’re called that for a reason), baking bread (really, you’ll never do it in real life, and if you do it’ll turn out stale and grey) and fixing the broken heater is NOT a trend of the masses, but the trend of life. It’s the trend of getting old. Nothing wrong there – I’m looking forward to the beauty of aging, just not at this tender age.

In global trendspotting terms it’s just plain wrong I think. Filippa K Ease is not exactly new. The global trend is rather about social life. Facebook-groups springing to real life get togethers. There has NEVER been so many party opportunities (or is that my life situation?) and clubs are popping up every night of the week. I think people are increasingly craving friends, company and fun. Social is the new black.

Nina, som är planner på Garbergs, och jag hade ett långt reklamprat häromdagen över en bit thaimat. Jag önskar att fler kreatörer hade såna prat med en planner. Och slöt fred. Kramades och skapade förståelse. Helst skulle jag se att de limmade ihop sina huvuden som Siamesiska tvillingar och jobbade som en person.

En bra planner är både trendspanare och strateg, både fågelskådare och schackspelare. Och peeping tom. En bra kreatör kan sätta ihop företeelser från till synes helt olika områden till någonting intressant. Någonting som går att prata om. Det är en match made in heaven. Evolutionen kommer ha sin gång, och planner/kreatörspar kommer ta över världen. Tro mig. Dinosaurier se upp!

Det var David Schwieler på Remotion som sa det först: Johan, du är hälften planner, hälften kreatör. Jag tänkte inte så mycket på det då. Vad en planner var hade jag, liksom många andra kreatörer då, ingen vidare koll på. Det är nu när jag tänker tillbaka på det, efter att ha fått en lysande föreläsning på ämnet “vad gör en planner” av Nina, som jag inser vilken fin komplimang det var. Jag är en androgyn halvplanner. Vad fint!

Och jo, det är sant. Jag älskar att plöja trendbloggar och snacka spaningar över thaimat. Jag spenderar hellre en kväll med Wired och en latte än med fotbollsmatch och folköl. Och jag gillar det. Jag skulle till och med gå så långt som att säga att det är mitt förbannade ansvar att gilla det om jag skall sitta och fakturera tvåtusen spänn i timmen. Och om det inte är mitt förbannade ansvar så är det istället mitt förbannade ansvar att söka upp en stor tub superlim och en rakad plannerskalle.

Så. Gå nu ut och ragga upp en planner.