Memory of the future is the provocative phrase that I came across recently that refers to the brain's ability to use memory to picture and plan future events. I term it provocative because of its combination of memory a word that evokes looking back and future that evokes looking forward.
Being ignorant of its neuroscientific origin, I immediately conjured up the idea of memories of what we were told the future would bring - the ones that usually involved personalised-jetpacks and dehydrated food.
Inevitably memories of the future are usually unfulfilled, but the whole concept is so redolent of ambition, aspiration and lost opportunities that it seems to me to be a rich seam for marketing to mine. While it's uniquely individual inasmuch as it combines memory of what we expected the future to look like and what we hoped our own personal futures would become, it taps in perfectly to the whole idea of consumption being about creating that future.
I'm not sure yet where this lead, but if your product/service could promise that our memory of the future is, in fact, our future, that would be a compelling first step.
