Pop Tops The Car Of Our Future

Let’s face it, self-driving-electric cars are on the way and they will be here. No matter how much we are scared of them we will like them you know why? We’ll get our time back. All that time driving every where we’ll get to do the things we really want to do in a car like text people.

Here’s the idea. What if your car could be better suited for what you liked or wanted to do?

In this case. You might own the chassis and the tops are inter-changeable. Maybe you have a top for your every day use but what if you where going to take a long over night trip. You could get in your sleeper car and wake up in the town you wanted to go too. So why not have a car or a “Pop Top” that is designed for sleeping? You can even bring your high thread count sheets and your favorite pillow!

The chassis sits in your driveway with the standard top on it. You can order your temp “Pop Top” online and the sleeper car delivers itself. By yet another self-driving chassis. I can even pick up your “Pop Top” and take it back for servicing and cleaning.

You car lifts up and off the chassis.

The chassis drives away…

…and under the sleeper car “Pop Top”. The delivery chassis takes off to make another delivery. This could all be automatic and you wouldn’t have to do a thing. Wouldn’t that be a great use of your time? You could spend more time doing whatever you want.

You could even have a “Pop Top” that’s a mobile office. It could be custom just for you or a team. This might be useful for many jobs, giving you an office right on site. Yeah the windows could blacked out too…Say you’d rather bike to work but you live 40 miles away. Well you own a sports model “Pop Top” and have a mobile gym. You could put in 10 miles while you ride to your office. Don’t worry you won’t have to power the car but maybe you can capture some of the power? Yes the bike is mounted in there so you won’t fall over.

So keeping that in mind our cars should be as flexible as the things we want to do in them. In the future we might just rent the tops and be more interested in what we do in them than what we do with them.

Another thing to consider with self-flying-drones that will haul people around in 60 years we won’t even need roads and then we can grind up all that concrete to build mega cities… but I’ll save that for another post.

Send the Very Best like a Hallmark Card

Want my data part 2

I don’t like E-Cards. (Sorry to anyone who has ever sent me one.). Not because I think it’s lazy or anything I’m mostly worried about all the spam and malware that comes with it.

I know this is scary to some people but what if I gave Hallmark Cards my whole Google address book and Calendar? What would they know? They’d know my relationships, birthday, anniversary’s well all the major events in my life along with those of my address book.

OKAY, This Is The Scary Part. (For Brands)

Don’t get too greedy or go for the over sell here. Provide a good service and everyone will want to join in because they will see how much time this will save them. Here’s how it works.

Save me a trip to the Card Store. I know they are beautiful places and the help there is always outstanding. But I always find I run out of time to go to the card shop. The stores won’t go away but there’s a certain segment like me that just can’t find the time for it.

So, here take my address book.

3 Weeks before any event you send me an alert for X event. You know it’s their birthday and their relationship too me.
Show me cards only related to that. ( After a while you’ll see the kind I like to get, yum more data!) This will help you design better cards.
Let me pick the card through your app.
If I have other events around that time I can do them then too.

Now

You send me the stamped envelopes, pre-addressed ready to go back in the mail to my loved ones.
All I have to do is Sign, write a little something. Insert a check add my personal touch. ( now offer ideas for those personal touches. )
Go all “Apple” on the box it arrives in and that might even become a keepsake. You know Hallmark could make a great box!

Here’s another fine line you have to worry about crossing. You can’t just take the address of all the people I just gave you and start spamming them to get your new service. It will be a hard carrot to ignore by you’ll have to do it. I think people will talk about this to but they might also want to keep it a secret. They wouldn’t want to think people aren’t putting in the effort to go buy a card.

Keep in mind they are still putting in the effort to buy a card. The creative, reading, and becoming touched by something is still happening.
You are helping to save my time getting to the spot where that happens.
Looks like I never forget, EVER. You’re also making it look like I care more because now I don’t EVER miss anything.
You’re making me look more organized.
You’re giving me back the fun part with less effort on my part.

Everyone knows you care about your family and everyone knows you’d like to do more. Why not make it so easy for them to do it. You figure out the pricing. Per card, subscription fees, postage mark up. You make my life better and I’ll give you stuff like money and my data without complaining.

I believe if companies can find a way to make my life better they’ll start wining with better customer loyalty and data to make better products.

You can read Part 1 here. It’s about grocery shopping we all love that right?

Zip Train

When I worked in the city I really enjoyed the train. Most people say they like driving home from work because it relaxes them. Being on a train is the best way to relax where you can tune out even take a nap not to mention all the other things you could be doing like sketching ZIP Trains. Not something you can do in a car, well till we get our Google Cars!

Here’s the ZIP Train. This train is meant to fit on the current highway systems. If you live in the Western Suburbs of Chicago you know the train system is designed to get people into the city not around it.

With Flexible car sizes that can be linked together by extra mini electric engines to push more cars.

(Above:) Notice how the rails are vertically spaced. With wheel that hug the track just like a roller coaster. Passenger Cars would also have a wheeled system built in. With limited mobile power but they could still move on their own in case of an emergency.

The concept behind ZIP Train is you don’t need extra land and it can be built right in the existing median. No more land to buy and it only should take up one car width. ZIP Train is a cross between a roller coaster and a train.

(Below: )The seating is single file with seats that can swivel out to great the passengers. This is to take advantage of the small footprint of the train.

As you can see you can have a bi-directional train on the same track. It would also have a solar panel cover. Something maybe Solar Roadways could design?

Inside the cabin it would function much the same way all METRA trains works. But maybe with more added features like outlets both power and USB and hideaway tables.

I love the idea of the Hyperloop and it will be perfect for long distance travel. The ZIPTrain concept is designed to take better advantage of less available property and existing roadways.

If you want my data, you need to give me something.

I think if you’re going to mine my data you need to give me something in return. No, I don’t mean 20% off, some special access code or even points. I mean something that makes my life better or easier. Give me my time back to do the thing I really want to do.

Make My Life Better!

Marketers, if you can make my life better you’ll get better data that will make my life even better and make me a more loyal customer. After all isn’t that what you really want my loyalty, my brand loyalty? Here’s 2 examples of how you could expand your data mining to produce products and services that will make me spend more money and feel better about me handing over the information you deem so valuable to advertisers.

My 2 ideas center around food, and caring about your family and friends.

Your Grocery Store

Let me start with a simple trip to a grocery store. Yes many stores offer loyalty cards that track my every purchase and might, I mean MIGHT give me relevant coupons for my next visit. I have news for you I rarely look at those and to me they are a waste of paper. I’m sure to some people they are not. I get too many receipts throughout the day, just get rid of them. But a better use of the receipt would be to make it digital. Then it could talk to other apps like “My Fitness Pro” that helps you keep track of your food intake.

Okay we’ve really been dealing with deep data mining for more than a few years now. Now it’s time to put it to good use. Here’s how my grocery store can make my life better.

Here’s what you know .

You know who I am.
You know what I buy.
You know when I buy it.
And about what time I might be coming into the store.

Look this is just a small example of what you really know about be me but is never put to good use.

Offer These Services

Cart Service
Meal Options
Upgrades
Health Tracking

Cart service? Have a cart ready for me when I come into the store with most of the things I buy based on my history. It can have anywhere from 30 to 90% of the products I normally buy every week. You might even send me a text alert that says want all these? Then I check off all the things I don’t. When I walk in that Saturday afternoon. I grab the cart that my phone directs me too. Most of my shopping is done!

Guess what I have time for? More shopping. More shopping for things I wouldn’t normally have time for because I really, really just want to get my stuff and get out of there. Because yes I have better things that I’d rather be doing than spending my day at the store. I like eating but I’m not a foodie. I might linger at that soda or chip display. Pick an more expensive meat or look at that thing I’ve never tried. I might even partake in the sampler displays because I have more time or more interest in trying something new. Maybe now they should show my how to cook something new?

Meal Options. What can I make with all the stuff I have and regularly buy? Believe me I don’t know. I’m lucky if I happen to run across something that looks good on Pinterest that mentions a food I know I have. This makes my life better how? I hate spending time figuring out what I should eat this week. I spend a lot of my time being creative and food is not one of those things I want to be creative with. But if my local store could offer me suggestions based on what I buy that would be helpful. There might be 5 different meals I could make with what I have that I don’t even know about. You could even dial in your dietary requirements to pick better foods and recipes. That doesn’t mean I won’t buy the junk food.

Upgrades or Upsell. Now here’s the perfect upsell. “Did you know if you bought these [Insert Item Here] you could make up to 10 more different meals? This is all database information that could be instantly paired up with my purchases that could make my life easier.

Drill deeper

Now now that you can start predicting those details. What other things you could predict? How much salt I go through and when I’ll need more. I could plug in my diet restrictions and you could really build menus for me. And yes put that in the cart.

To me this seems like a real opportunity for companies like food, health and lifestyle to really work together and create services to make our lives better.

You can read part 2 here, it’s about Hallmark

What if pay per clicks worked this way?

Okay I don’t mind paying for clicks in an effort to get my idea out there but there’s nothing new about this kind of advertising. Once again you’re putting something up there that gets in the way of what everyone else wants to do.

Your Horn is Broken,

I want someone else’s Horn!

Maybe all these social networks should thinking about it this way. So listen up Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook. I’m paying for clicks but the horn you’re blowing my message through is just ignored.

Could you offer my bid to the people with the real social networks? The real people who have real followers, real demographics and a real voice.

Send power users my offer.
They pick or reject. ( maybe I could pay for feedback for why it didn’t get selected)
They hit their promote button.
Social Network and Person with the Horn can split the bid.

After you send them an offer in a separate feed only they see. It’s up to them now to promote or not promote. If it’s something that they like, they just hit the promote button and boom it out in their feed. They get a commission off of every click and I might get better clicks.

We’ll also find out if they have a real voice or not.

Now that I think about it, this could be a stand alone app bypassing the social ad systems altogether and the horns can just take the full commission. Hmmm

Look I know my bids are low, 5 cents. But if this method worked I could say if I had a nickel for…

Drive with a view

I can’t be the only on who hates being behind an 18 wheeler in a town you don’t know and I can’t read the street signs because of the wheeled wall in front of you.

So here’s the idea.

Mount low cost flexible video screens on the back doors of trailer trucks. Someday soon these screens will be able to go on to surfaces like this just like a giant sticker or wallpaper.

The front of the truck has a camera lens with a similar view a car might have traveling behind the truck. (In a perfect world the lens would change based on the rear car distance.)

From the Drivers POV you can see and read what’s in front of the truck almost like wasn’t even there. The trailer door latches and mechanical parts are still visible so it doesn’t totally disconnect drivers from reality.

Now the question is, do you cover the whole trailer to improve the view from all directions?