Strategic creative: Scenarios and concept development

Scenario-based planning was used to develop a vision piece that depicted ubiquitous “cloud” computing and multi-platform streaming media almost a decade before becoming reality.

Working closely with Capgemini’s Digital Asset Management consulting group in 2003, I led a creative team to collaborate and brainstorm over a couple of days to develop scenarios and storylines for a near-future media landscape 5 to 10 years into the future, specifically geared around consumption of media and how digital asset management (and rights management) technologies would play a role.

We developed a set of scenarios that touched on video, audio and printed media in a world with pervasive high-speed wireless networking, and where consumer media is accessed from the “cloud” rather than stored locally. (This was years before the concept of “cloud computing” would have been considered even remotely viable.)


We came up with a name, a visual identity, and mocked up several user interfaces that showed how media would follow the user and adapt itself to the context in which it was being played back or viewed… everything from desktop computers and mobile devices to home theatres and automotive systems.


The opportunity to stretch out and explore the thin edge was very exciting, and the scenarios gave the sales team something concrete which they could take out to clients and demonstrate our thinking.