The document discusses how social media and technology are making humans more social and helping fulfill innate social needs. It argues that brands and social media fill the "friendship gap" created by modern cities that limit natural social group sizes to around 25, whereas humans' neocortex is adapted for groups of 150. Social media allow "mobile grooming" and gossip that were important for bonding larger ancestral groups and helped language evolve. The future will see more "social consumption" using collaborative models online and offline to meet social and altruistic needs in win-win ways.

1. The Future's Bright,
The Future's Social
Robin Wight,
President, Engine

5. Brands only exist
because they help
consumers make buying
decisions without using
too much brain power

6. Your brain doesn’t like
changing its mind

7. R RL L
a) INITIAL b) PRACTICED
Practised tasks are easier for the brain to do than novel tasks
Source: The Executive Brain Frontal Lobes & the Civilised Mind – Elkhonon Goldberg

9. QuickTime™ and a
YUV420 codec decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

10. 33%
27%
19%
9%
What car did people think the yuppie drove?

11. Behaviour Change
Attitude Change Behaviour Change
?
Attitude Change
Brain science has taught us that it’s normally the other
way round: behaviour change leads to attitude change.

12. The mind changer:

16. Now With Added

17. From To
Being with
them for
the journey
Telling people
where to go

18. Be a companion

22. Reduced negative
comments about
Renault's
customer service
from 53% to 16%
Protecting Renault’s reputation for potential
purchasers

23. 21 top UK style
blogs hosted
bespoke Next pop up
shops reaching
260,000 readers
Working with bloggers to drive sales

24. Social PR
8 million
people in
4 days

25. The Future’s Bright
The Future’s Social
And it always has been

26. Why the average person has 130 friends on
facebook
Source: Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, Robin Dunbar

27. The evolution of ‘mobile grooming’: scratch
my back and I’ll scratch yours

28. Language devolved to help us bond in
the groups of 150 we had developed to
survive when we left the jungle and
became two-legged humans

29. The ‘friendship gap’ that facebook filled
Ancestral villages:
neo-cortex group of 150
 Cities (from 4000BC)
limit us into groups of 25

30. Our genes invented the web and the mobile
phone to give us back our neo-cortex groups
of 150

31. ‘An animal’s behaviour tends to
maximise the survival of the
genes “for” that behaviour,
whether or not the genes
happen to be in the body of the
particular animal performing it.’
Richard Dawkins
‘The Extended Phenotype’

32. Extending the reach of the genes beyond the
body of the animal
Beaver Dam Mobile phone facebook

33. Two thirds of conversations
are on social topics.
And women ‘gossip’ four
times as much as men.
For good genetic reasons.

34. The next step: from social media to social
consumption

35. From personal ownership to social ownership
‘Collaborative Consumption’
“350 hours a year having sex. 420 looking for parking”

36. The Big Society
will be delivered
via ‘collaborative
consumption’ as
well as the re-invention
of volunteering

37. iamcreative.org.uk is a new model where
everyone wins: altruism a bonus not a motive

40. Self interest rules ok!
Creativity boosted for kids
with little effort from
overstretched teachers. And
partnership with Business
Chance to capture the thinking
of creative young people for
your brand and engage them in
it at a formative age
Emerging high-status activity of
volunteering that only needs 3-
4 hours a month as it becomes
a ‘must do’ for Creative
Industry people. Not having it
on your CV will be a drawback
in trying to get a new job
Schools Brands Mentors

41. The Future’s Bright.
Technology is making us human again

42. Thank you very much for your
Continuous Partial Attention