Hill Holliday’s Baba Shetty will interview The Kraft Group’s president, Jonathan Kraft, on stage at our second annual TVnext summit featuring a lineup of nearly 30 television industry thought leaders including actor Christopher Gorham, executive producer Tom Yellin – and taped video appearances by Carson Daly and Piers Morgan.

Jonathan Kraft, who led the blockbuster network rights negotiations for the NFL, is someone who truly understands the power of television both on the primary and second screens.

Jonathan A. Kraft is the president and chief operating officer for The Kraft Group, the holding company of the Kraft family’s varied business interests. He is also the president of the three time Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots. As president of the Patriots, Kraft oversees the management and strategic planning of each department within the organization and serves on multiple NFL owner committees.

Kraft’s NFL obligations are only a small part of his day-to-day responsibilities, which are as diversified as the companies he oversees. The Kraft Group has a variety of interests concentrated in five specific areas: the distribution of forest products, paper and packaging manufacturing, sports and entertainment, real estate development and private equity and venture investing.

We are thrilled to have Jonathan as part of TVnext.

There aren’t many tickets left…
While last year’s TVnext was invite only, this year we’ve made a portion of the seats available to the public. But they’re going fast.

We hope to see you at Boston’s ICA on February 27!

Yesterday, we saw a move in the pharma industry that we’ve seen before: taking matters into our own hands.

With social and digital media technologies (along with usage and adoption rates) changing daily – the pharma industry has been largely hesitant to actually make a solid move into the social space. This void paired with the complete absence of an FDA “what-and-what-not-to-do” mandate has pharma marketers simmering with fears that an FDA warning letter will land at their desks.

But taking a page out of PhRMA’s playbook with their DTC advertising “Guiding Principles” of 2009, the Digital Health Coalition (DHC) yesterday released their own document aptly titled “Social Guiding Principles Project”.

This bold move from the industry think-tank only affirms that the pharmaceutical sector is growing restless.  Prognosticating a proactive move for the FDA’s lead in formulating a guiding thought on the matter will entirely deteriorate [those of us ho have already pioneered] truly socially rooted health related engagements. So it’s time for the pharma brand masses to make a move.  And the DHC understands that.

What the DHC has outlined is spot on.  We need to be pragmatic and mindful in self-regulating our social business and communications channels, but need to fuel the social innovation internally. It may entirely be up to coalitions and pharma industry groups like the DHC to help remove the onus on pharma brands, but also up to the pharma brands themselves look to these groups as partners in leading the charge.

And it’s up to us to help them get there.

This year’s Super Bowl was a “four screen” social TV event – and that includes its advertising. In an attempt to experience as much of it as possible, I was flipping between Twitter, Brand Bowl, and Facebook (Coke Polar Bears) on my laptop — my iPad was synchronized with the game via IntoNow — and I was juggling Shazam, Miso, and GetGlue on my iPhone. Yet still, I was just scratching the surface as I could have also been using PrePlay, Viggle and a whole host of other second screen apps.

As Stacey and I wrote in Social TV, the current experience of “social TV” is so fragmented right now that it can be quite exhausting (and distracting) in aggregate. In reality, most people will engage on one or two apps/devices at most which means to reach the social TV audience en masse, brands need to be in many places (screens and apps) at once – and hopefully connect the dots into an integrated, rich story across screens and apps.

Real-time Cross-Screen Storytelling
I was particularly engrossed in what Coke did. The brand’s infamous polar bears literally watched and reacted to the game in real-time. One bear was rooting for the Giants and the other, the Patriots. As events transpired on the primary TV screen, the bears would respond through a second screen Facebook app.

During game-play downtime, the bears would share backchannel tweets or posts from their own virtual “second screen” devices. When a Coca-Cola commercial came on, the events in the ad synched with the events online but from two different vantage points. It was a very smart, fun, engaging way to create an immersive, long-lasting brand interaction. And just begins to show what’s possible when the real-time web meets live TV.

I foresee a time when dynamic ad technology seamlessly integrates with social media as this is just the beginning of an exciting era of social TV. And it will become much more complex and fragmented before we start to see what kinds of experiences resonate the most with wider and larger audiences.

On the heels of our Christopher Gorham announcement, we are honored to have award winning Executive Producer Tom Yellin as TVnext’s afternoon keynote speaker.

Tom is behind the acclaimed PBS four-part documentary series America In Primetime which, according to PBS, “focuses on character archetypes that have remained a staple of primetime through the generations – the Independent Woman, the Man of the House, the Misfit, and the Crusader – capturing both the continuity of the character, and the evolution.”

Watch Promo on PBS. See more from America in Primetime.

Tom is co-founder and President of The Documentary Group, where he has been executive producer of numerous films, including Babyland, China Inside Out, Operation Homecoming, and STEEP. The Documentary Group’s upcoming film projects include 10X10: The Girls Education Project, a feature-length film and social action campaign that embrace the enormous potential of girls in developing countries.

Before The Documentary Group, Tom spent many years as an executive producer at ABC News. In 1989, he created the award-winning Peter Jennings Reporting series, which produced documentaries such as From the Tobacco File:Untold Stories of Betrayal and Neglect, The Search for Jesus, How to Get Fat Without Really Trying, and The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy.

As president and executive producer of PJ Productions, he oversaw all productions since the company’s inception in 2003. Tom was also executive producer of ABC 2000, a 23-hour long millennium broadcast, the 12-hour series The Century, and the multi-part In Search of America. He created and was executive producer of Day One, a primetime ABC News magazine.

His programs have won numerous broadcast and journalism awards, including the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award, the George Foster Peabody Award, the News Emmy Award and the Polk Award.

We have limited tickets.
While last year’s event was invite-only, we’ve opened up a limited number of seats to the general public on a first-come/first served basis.

See you on February 27!

With TVnext a mere 25 days away, we’re thrilled to announce Christopher Gorham as one of our featured keynote speakers.

Chris stars as blind CIA operative, Auggie Anderson, in USA Network’s hit original series COVERT AFFAIRS.

Over the last couple of years, he has been very engaged with a variety of social media platforms, including USA’s Character Chatter, Twitter and Facebook. Most recently, he was the first to tweet under Glamour magazine’s Twitter handle @glamourmag for the midseason return of Covert Affairs. During the recent midseason of the show, Gorham directed and produced Globe Tracker which highlights the international nature of the show through video and photos he shot on location. He engaged the show’s fans through the Covert Affairs Tweetcast: Mission Budapest, a six week interactive episode that unfolded over Twitter in real time.

Gorham is known for his starring role on ABC’s Ugly Betty as Betty’s accountant boyfriend, the endearing “Henry.” He then transitioned into the role of a cold-blooded serial killer in the Jon Turteltaub produced CBS Series Harper’s Island. Gorham adeptly turned leading man on the acclaimed action-adventure drama series Jake 2.0 where he starred as Jake Foley.  Gorham was also a series regular on the NBC comedy Out of Practice opposite Henry Winkler, Ty Burrell, Stockard Channing and Jennifer Tilly.  Additional series regular television credits include Medical Investigation, Odyssey 5 and Ryan Murphy’s Popular.

Most recently, Gorham starred alongside Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson and Terrence Howard in The Ledge which competed in the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.  Gorham has completed starring roles in three other independent films last year; Answer This! with Arielle Kebbel and Chris Parnell, My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend with Alyssa Milano, and Somebody’s Hero.

In addition to having Chris live and in-person at the event, TVnext will also feature pre-recorded messages from Piers Morgan and Carson Daly – AND we have a phenomenal lineup of television industry execs.

Tickets are going fast!
While last year’s event was invite-only, we’ve opened up a limited number of seats to the general public on a first-come/first served basis.

Stay tuned for another keynote speaker announcement later today! Hope to see you at Boston’s ICA on February 27.

Have you picked up your tickets to our TVnext summit? Our early bird discount ends tonight at 11pm (EST). We have over 25 speakers lined up for what will be a killer event celebrating the current and future of television.

Check out our TVnext panels:

• INTEGRATION
• INSIGHTS
• INTERACTION

Hope to see you on Monday, February 27!

I am a bona fide creative mind with a balanced left/right brain.  I’ve gotten good at challenging (read: picking debates) with colleagues and friends.  One of which, about a year back, revolved around the merits and downfalls of the once popular and pre-Yahoo! acquisition bookmarking service, del.ico.us, and the need for it to evolve to the next level or just die off slowly.

At the core of my argument lay this: there lies a human need, no matter which side of the brain you fall, to adapt a visual context to the informational landscape you would attempt to organize. It’s crucial in defining a valuable and inherently usable service.  After all, we are in some way or form, visual beings. Tags and text just weren’t cutting it. I needed a quick visual symbol that summarized my bookmarking intent.  We needed a service that picked up where del.ico.us fell flat: one that would allow me to actually find my bookmarks easily, share them directly with my friends, and organize my interests in a cogent manner.

Six months later, along came Pinterest. I remember sending it out immediately.  “This, my friends, is exactly what I am talking about!”.

I’ll admit that my initial reaction was a bit overexcited.  Having used the site for months now, I’ve been able to temper my excitement a bit and ground myself with what it is NOW and align with where I hope it will evolve, but in the world of startups as we know: you test, learn, and adapt.  Pinterest has a long way to go, but man have they come a long way from tags and text.

So what exactly has Pinterest accomplished?

Well – they’ve been able to shift standard bookmarking into one that makes it simple to visually categorize the interests I find across the web.  More so, my “boards” speak volumes about who I am as an individual.  They enable my social identity to be broadcast by the things that I like, that represent me.  Even more so, it allows me and all others in my social network (Facebook and Twitter) to share these likes and interests amongst each other. As individuals – we tend to surround ourselves with like-minded people.  My friend pins something I think is awesome…then I pin it myself.  And so it goes.  It’s the power of influence.  An influence which has many times driven me to make purchases and recommendations to others whom I know share similar interests.

So as a marketer and an advertiser, I am innately thinking, “What Does this Mean for a Brand?”

Pinterest has come out strong in the lifestyle/home/food category.  This, by no surprise, skews more toward the female demographic. Of the almost 4 million users, there are nearly 1.5 million visits per day at an average of 14 minutes per visit.  This is impressive.  A recent article by econsultancy revealed some additional interesting stats:

• Users are largely women (80%) versus men (20%)
• Aged mainly between 25 and 44 (accounting for 55% of the group, 30% are 25-34, 25% are 35 – 44)
• Just 25% of users have a bachelors degree or higher
• The majority live off a household income of $25-75k

For brands right now, there’s a huge opportunity to not only integrate your product by folding visual content into the mix, but to really authenticate and highlight the personality that is your brand.  The largest and most obvious ones lie within retail.  Look a little deeper and you’ll see a much bigger opportunity here.

Here are 4 great opportunities for brands right now:

Inspiration Boards

Homegoods, Bergdof Goodman and West Elm are among a few that are adopting the platform through a good mix of integrated inspiration boards .  New clothing and product lines are a great entrance into the sharing tool but also allow your brand to stay on top of current trends and styles.  How would you as a brand use your own product?  Spark inspiration and trend yourself by showing your own products in fun ways.

Connect with Those who are Using Your Product or Brand

Chobani is a good example of this.  They’ve created a board titled “Chobaniac Creations” where consumers who have blogged our referenced their yogurt in a recipe are highlighted.  It’s a great way to connect with your consumer while providing a different use or value for your product.

Branded Challenges or Contests

Another way to connect with your consumers? Inspire user-generated content creation on how they use or interact with your brand/product.  Lands End recently ran a contest “Pin It to Win It” where users created a board of their own favorite Land End items. $250 gift card each to the 10 winners judged on creativity, composition & style expertise.  Pretty effective way to create brand advocates and broaden your social impression, right?

Looking Beyond Retail

There’s more than just opportunity for retail here.  NBC’s “Today Show” is there.  And so is The Travel Channel.  Both using boards to show behind the scenes footage, vacation ideas and images of relevant items that both resonate with their viewers but also humanize their own brand personas.

So Pinterest is the latest craze, and in an environment where new social channels erupt almost daily, it’s interesting to see how much traction they’ve gotten in such a short time.  For those brands that are early to adopt – there’s a wide open spot for you.  But I’d be hard pressed to think that with all the recent attention, that their plan wouldn’t include opening this up to bigger and broader uses in the coming year.

There’s a lot of debate as to whether or not people today tune-in to TV spots. For over 70 years, the medium had no instant response mechanism we’ve all come to enjoy from the digital space. In the world of social TV, the game has changed – and TV, today, indeed has a measurable feedback loop.

At approximately 4pm (Eastern Time) yesterday, during the AFC championship game, Dr. Pepper ran its “Always One of a Kind” TV spot – ending with an #ImA hashtag:

While Dr. Pepper is certainly not the first brand to integrate Twitter into TV spots, their final art card gave quite a bit of prominence as a call-to-action to tweet. And at that very moment over 2000 people did just that, creating close to a million “social impressions.”

So we know that there’s tune in – and so much so that people are actually taking notice of the TV spot’s ending, many of whom go on to tweet. While a good portion of the Tweets are positive (people praising the brand for a great TV spot and wanting one of the t-shirts), the overall sentiment (as measured by Radian6) skewed negative (when excluding the majority of the tweets categorized as neutral).

Is this good or bad?
It all depends how it’s looked at. Now that TV has a feedback loop, brands are able to get instant feedback on their TV spots – and in this case, one might ask whether or not running a flash-mob like scene filled with “gleeful” singing and dancing during an intense football game would resonate. But suffice it to say there are TV shows where the praise for the hopeful message in Dr. Pepper’s TV spot would only be amplified.

Brands now have pretty easy access to television’s growing feedback loop – an instant unfiltered focus group. The question is what do they do with that data? What is the value of all of the social impressions being created?

We’ll be asking these very questions during TVnext’s “insights” panel on February 27, hearing from companies that include: Nielsen, Bluefin Labs, Trendrr, SocialGuide,TVGuide.com, and NBC. It’ll prove to be an interesting and contentious debate. Hope you can join us at TVnext.

About a month ago, Facebook began to roll out Timeline, which was touted to users as an “easy way to rediscover the things you shared.” This week, the second layer of this platform shift began to take shape, as some 60+ new social apps were introduced into the ecosystem.

These “frictionless sharing” apps, as they’re called, are designed to allow passive sharing of user actions as they are generated. Watch a movie, click a link, listen to a song, and it’s automatically shared to your timeline.

Sharing has become an assumed byproduct of whatever we are doing. We do it, therefore we must share it. No thought, no bother.

But there’s a cost to these Open Graph applications that is as imperceptible as the effort required to share through them. As the market literally becomes flooded with these passive sharing actions, what happens to their social value?

True influence and the power of shared content in the social space come from intent and selectivity. The value of any shared content (analog or digital) is in the sharer’s consideration of both the content and the receiving audience. In marketing terms, it’s all about the right message, to the right person, at the right time.

With this “new breed of social applications,” it seems entirely possible that Facebook may actually be devaluing the very activity that it is staking its future on. While the bold assumption that sharing volume will only increase over time could hold true, this view conveniently ignores the other side of the conversation. It forgets that with a flood of noise into an already noisy system, users are likely to retreat and begin ignoring as much data as they are producing.

Marketers will continue to chase the social share, but in doing so they can’t ignore the shifting value of users’ actions. Is it time then to consider moving our social investments to stronger, emerging markets, much as we would in the face of a non-social currency weakened by overproduction?

Television is at the center of an immense amount of innovation – rapidly changing the way in which consumers experience the 73 year-old medium and creating new and powerful opportunities for brands to reach and engage audiences across media channels, screens, and devices.

After the success of our 2011 TVnext summit, Hill Holliday is thrilled to announce TVnext 2012 taking place on Monday, February 27 at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Arts.

With over 25 industry luminaries, TVnext 2012 is a can’t miss event as we explore television’s future in a format fraught with case studies, demonstrations, rich debate, and insights. Speakers include:

• Mike Sheehan – Chief Executive Officer at Hill Holliday
• Lisa Hsia – Executive Vice President of Digital Media at Bravo
• Jesse Redniss – Senior Vice Present of Digital at USA Network
• J.P. Lespinasse – Director of Social Media at BET
• Tom Thai – Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Bluefin Labs
• Radha Subramanyam – SVP of Consumer Insights and Analytics at Nielsen
• Julie DeTraglia – SVP, Strategic Digital and Broadcast Marketing Research at NBC
• Christy Tanner – General Manager and EVP at TV Guide Digital
• Sean Casey – Founder & CEO at SocialGuide
• Claudio Marcus – EVP at Visible World
• Somrat Niyogi – Co-Founder & CEO at Miso
• Evan Krauss – EVP of Advertising at Shazam
• Kimber Myers – Director of Partnerships at GetGlue
• Seth Tapper – Founder & CEO at SecondScreen Networks
• Greg Rivera – Director at Microsoft/Xbox
• Mark Ghuneim – Founder & CEO at Trendrr
• Matt Leger – Director of Integrated Media at Comcast/Xfinity

And many more to be announced…

TVnext will also serve as the official book launch for Social TV, authored by our very own Mike Proulx and Stacey Shepatin.

There are limited public tickets available.
While last year’s event was exclusively invite-only, we are opening up a limited number of seats to the general public on a first-come/first served basis. Tickets are $299 before January 20, 2012 and $450 afterwards.

Your ticket price includes access to the entire day’s events at the ICA along with  a light breakfast, lunch, post-event networking cocktail hour, and a copy of Social TV.

If you missed TVnext 2011 and want a taste of what this year’s summit will be like, check out our 2011 highlights video:

Press inquiries?
If you are a member of the press and have questions or would like to request an invitation, please contact us.

See you on February 27!

Recently, I did the unthinkable. I methodically culled my list of Facebook friends, removing high-school classmates, old girlfriends and one-time acquaintances by the dozens. I didn’t hide them from my newsfeed; I didn’t move them into special lists. I deleted them. I deleted 168 of them.

And it felt fantastic.

Inspired by Path’s use of Dunbar’s number, I had “social media waste” on the mind and I reconsidered the networks I’d built around myself over the past several years. I, like so many other social media users, was quick to amass as many friends/followers/fans/connections as possible, across as many networks as possible.

The unfortunate side-effect of this social media arms race was that in the process, I had somehow reduced the value of any truly deep relationships that I had cultivated in a pre-Facebook world.

Mired in a sea of meaningless connections, I resolved to do more than segment my connections into circles and lists or manage them by fine-tuning hundreds of delicate privacy settings. The solution was simply to have fewer connections; I would increase the quality of my network by decreasing its quantity.

While it’s unclear whether or not Path and its 150 connection limit will take hold as a platform, the core concept is worth considering. You can’t have more connections, because you can’t have more connections. It’s psychologically and sociologically not possible to carry on this many “relationships” at one time.

Zuckerberg’s law – that we will continue to share more and more of our daily lives with others – may hold true in the end, but I believe we’ll begin to share in much tighter online circles than we have before. The volume of content we as users create and distribute is not slowing down, and the movement toward frictionless sharing in the social world means that controlling the composition and size of your social network is more important than ever.

In order for true meaning and value to return to the social space, networks need to shrink, not expand. Genuine engagement is not possible with thousands of people at one time, and in the coming year (and beyond) we will start to see a re-emphasis on quality over quantity, for both brands and individual users alike.

With less than two months before Social TV hits shelves (both physical and virtual), Stacey and I are amidst the final stages of the book’s production before it goes to print two weeks from tomorrow.

While you’ve already heard about Social TV from our perspective, here are 5 additional opinions about the book that will appear on Social TV’s back cover:

“We are at the beginning of social TV’s impact on the way audiences experience television and networks create, market and measure shows. If you are a TV executive, a content creator, or a brand marketer seeking to engage and understand your audience, Social TV is must read. Mike and Stacey share an essential roadmap to help you navigate the radically changing landscape of television as it blends with social media.”

— Chloe Sladden, Director of Content and Programming at Twitter

——————

“At the intersection of television, social media, and mobile lies a rapidly growing opportunity for brands to engage with their target audience in powerful and innovative ways. Mike and Stacey could not be more timely and relevant with Social TV as a guide for CMOs and other marketing professionals making their way through a new era of TV to differentiate their brands and drive sales.”

— John Costello, Chief Global Marketing and Innovation Officer, Dunkin’ Brands

——————

“This book captures a critical moment in time, when social TV exploded, changing the relationship between TV networks and their audiences forever. TV is no longer a one-way communication; it is a two-way experience for fans and celebrities to participate, share and grow the conversation around shows and brands as never before.”

— Lisa Hsia, Executive Vice President, Bravo Digital Media

——————

“In Social TV, the authors have taken on a task akin to documenting a hurricane while flying through it. And they have emerged with a book worth every page or ePage it takes up. This book not only documents TV’s past and its volatile present, it presents the many possible paths the industry could take. Whether you’re in the boardroom or the classroom, you won’t get a more complete and more compelling view of TV’s changing nature than this.”

— James McQuivey, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research

——————

“The intersection between TV and social media is changing the way we experience entertainment and advertising. Mike Proulx and Stacey Shepatin provide an invaluable, in-the-trenches look at this transformation. Read this and you’ll never look at your TV the same way again.”

— Todd Wasserman, Business Editor of Mashable

Stacey and I want to thank Chloe, John, Lisa, James, and Todd for taking the time to preview the book and provide their endorsement. You can pre-order Social TV at the best rates now.

Santa’s sleigh might just be filled with connected TV devices this holiday season. Over the course of the past week, three different people approached me with the same question: “I’m looking to buy either an Apple TV or Roku 2 for a gift, which should I get?”

In each case, my answer was a bit different based on the kind of content and existing technologies the gift recipient currently wants/has.

Apple TV vs. Roku 2

Apple TV’s AirPlay feature is perfect for those who are heavy iPhone/iPad/iTunes users. I personally love the ability to seamlessly finish listening to a song or watching a movie from my mobile device on to my home theater when I get home. I demoed this functionality a year ago. It’s also great for sharing photos or user generated videos from your device onto the TV screen instead of huddle around a small device – I recently did this when my family was over during Labor Day – the modern day “carousel” slide show.

The Roku Player streams 1080p video and has a lot more content channels. Both Apple TV and Roku support Netflix and Hulu Plus but Roku also has an HBO Go channel. This past July their latest product line (Roku 2) launched with a slick new design and motion sensor remote control supporting a series of casual games including the ever popular Angry Birds. Check out my Social TV (book) interview with Roku’s head of Marketing from July.

But wait, there are others.

The Apple TV and Roku 2’s high-end model both retail for $99 which is why they’re often compared. But as you’re doing your holiday shopping this weekend, don’t forget about the Boxee Box which has a lot of the same content as Roku, the ability to stream locally stored media, and just announced an add on “dongle” that acts as a digital TV antenna/tuner.

The Boxee Box retails for $179.99 and like the Apple TV and Roku, is also available at Best Buy (among other places) – The USB antenna will set you back an additional $49 (and isn’t available until January) I interviewed Boxee’s VP of Marketing for Social TV this Summer as well as during Hill Holliday’s TVnext Summit last January. You can also check out the demo I did when I first got my Boxee Box back in November of 2010.

And, of course, I’d be remiss not to mention Xbox which is has expanded beyond a gaming console and into a connected TV offering Kinect controller-free Hulu Plus, Netflix and a growing number of content sources including Verizon FiOS TV and soon Xfinity on-demand. Last week I shared a demo of Xbox’s latest software upgrades.

Your cable box will soon act like a connected TV.
Last June, I posted a video of Comcast’s CEO showcasing the next generation of Xfinity TV. To me it walks, talks, and smells like a connected TV device. For me, they’re the dark horse out of the bunch that I think will tip the scale towards bring Web + TV convergence to the masses. However, GigaOM’s Janko Roettgers’s bet is on the newly revamped Google TV.

Whatever happens, the direction is clear and “television” is becoming more exciting than ever before. Happy holiday shopping!

Stacey and I are amidst the final stages with Wiley in preparation for our book, Social TV, to launch in about 10 weeks.

Needless to say the process over the past 6 months has been “intensely exciting” and we want to thank everyone who has supported us — It’s awesome.

As a small thank you, we want to share with you the preface of the book to give you a sneak peak of what’s in store when the book hits shelves (and e-readers) on February 28.

[Download Social_TV-Preface]

If you like what you see, the book is available for pre-oder at a 44% early-bird discount.

Want us to come speak?

We’re starting to plan for a Social TV speaking tour — if your organization, school, or business is interested in having us in to talk about the exciting shifts in the television landscape, please send me an email or leave a comment on this post.

Stacey and I absolutely love this topic and are eagerly looking forward to the year ahead…

Last week, Spotify announced that their popular music service would become an application platform. While some critics have been underwhelmed by early limitations of the initiative – the platform is not yet available on mobile devices and does not offer interoperability with other similar services – we found ourselves rather excited by the potential future of what can be called Music As a Platform.

We are confident that one day a personal digital DJ will follow us and select the perfect song for every moment, scoring a soundtrack for our lives. Here are our twelve ideas for how this future could unfold:

1. Already, there are apps that match your music to how fast you are moving by comparing your steps per minute with the piece’s beats per minute. What if we also added your intended destination?  The app would give you something brisk during your morning walk to work, and something relaxing on the way back.

2. Have music recognize and match your location. A stroll through Boston Common would be accompanied by I’m Like A Bird. You’d be served the soundtrack from The Departed as you tour the city’s grittier neighborhoods.

3. A reading app could queue up music based on the book you are reading on your iPad by executing a semantic match of the music library to the story’s plot as you advance through the book. This could work well for graphic novels.

4. If you open an ad while reading a magazine on your iPad, the magazine could serve you a custom track that matches a set of criteria defined by the advertiser to create a specific “brand mood”, similarly to how Pandora builds its custom stations.

5. Use current or cumulative music listening habits to generate random encounters and conversation starters in an application connected to a dating site.

6. Hey, baby, let’s go to Vegas! Book a trip to LA and have your online travel agent treat you with a playlist with “California Dreamin’,” “Hotel California,” and “Californication” for the flight.

7. How about an app that could auto-compose a playlist based on the music preferences of everyone who RSVPed to a Facebook event? It could be a selection of “most listened” tracks, or a selection of common tracks that all group members have listened to.

8. Taking that idea further, how about an app that adjusts music in the room based on how enthusiastically people are dancing? Or, in a retail setting, how fast people are moving through the store?

9. Allow locations on Foursquare to suggest songs to you when you check in. Your favorite coffee shop could let you take the cafe experience with you by sharing its favorite tracks to your iPhone if you’re ordering your latte to go.

10. We would love an app that understands what we are doing on our computers and plays music to match our activity: something mellow when we check our email, something serious when we write blog posts. And the sad trombone when we lose that file we’ve been working on all night.

11. Place online identity and sharing on the top of a music platform and you get the following scenario. You like an ad you saw on TV, you look it up on YouTube, you share it on Facebook. If advertisers conclude that it’s the music that you really like about the ad, the track would be added to your playlist on a streaming service for a subtle brand connection.

12. Finally, we can imagine an app that takes in the ambient noise and voices around us and mixes them into a custom music piece, turning sound pollution into art.

There was something that Dennis Crowley, Co-Founder & CEO of Foursquare said at an AdClub event I attend in April of 2010. “We wanted to design a way to make cities, in general, easier to use.”

I liked that vision, but at the time I didn’t necessarily see it manifesting itself into the Foursquare app. For better or for worse, Foursquare was a bit typecast as more of a check-in/specials/loyalty sort-of-thing.

But then 9 months ago, Foursquare launched its explore tab, making it super easy for people to find specific kinds of places filtered by several dimensions of relevancy. As I’ve been traveling more a bit lately, this feature has become my best friend and companion.

When I got hungry yesterday, while in Paris, I clicked the explore –> Food button to reveal a bunch of places near my hotel.  I wanted something fast and not a sit-down kind-of-venue. I quickly found there was a “Cosi” (and wondered if it was connected to the U.S. chain).

The note that “this venue is popular on Foursquare” gave me assurance that it was a reputable spot. I also appreciated all of the tips that people left as it helped me to see some of the recommendations on the menu (and saw that it was, indeed, different from the U.S. chain).

Foursquare’s integration with Google Maps is a Godsend as with a mere click, I was able to plot my course to find Cosi through the streets of Paris.

And, upon arrival, checking-in was a breeze since I had the app already open.

I learned when I got there that this Cosi was, indeed, the inspiration used for the, now popular, Cosi franchise in the United States. There was something very warm, unique, vintage, and authentic about this place.

I used Foursquare similarly to find a good gym nearby and the tips in this case really made my decision for me – Which is yet another reason for brands (especially small businesses) to leverage Forusquare and their loyalists to, in effect, endorse the venue by providing helpful information to those yet to discover it – all thanks to Foursquare’s explore tab and its (well over) 10 million users.

Mike cross-posted this on his blog Harmonic Aftershock.

Our own Group Creative Director Rob Rich will be a featured panelist at the 20th  Annual Boston AICP Show and Next Awards tonight (Thursday, December 1) at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston.  The Next Awards honor marketing in the motion image across six categories: Integrated Campaign, Viral/Web Film, Website/Microsite, Product Integration, Experiential, and Apps.

For ticket information please click here.

We are kicking off the inaugural Hill Holliday Content Conference (#HHCoCo) on Wednesday to talk about the future of content with an entire line-up of industry stars including Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast.

We will also be sharing our newest research findings about the power of choice.

Things will get unwrapped throughout the day and shared here and at @hhcontent. Also keep an eye on #HHCoCo hash tag on Twitter for real-time updates.

new TWTR.Widget({ version: 2, type: 'search', search: '#HHCoCo', interval: 30000, title: '#HHCoCo', subject: 'Live coverage', width: 500, height: 200, theme: { shell: { background: '#030303', color: '#faf8f7' }, tweets: { background: '#030303', color: '#fafafa', links: '#1985b5' } }, features: { scrollbar: true, loop: false, live: true, behavior: 'all' } }).render().start();

We were incredibly excited to find out yesterday that Hill Holliday has been named by Media Magazine as the Media Agency of the Year in the full-service agency category.

In the past few years this is an award that’s been given to the kinds of agencies whose work we’ve admired from afar, and we couldn’t be more honored to earn this recognition.

A big thank you to our phenomenal team that has created a body of work that stands out, and to all our clients for their ongoing trust in us.

Congrats!

Four months after Google announced (and subsequently closed) their brand page pilot program, Google has announced the launch of Google+ brand pages for businesses. These pages are Google’s answer to Facebook pages, which allow companies to have a representation for their business on the social network and interact with members of that community.

Here are a couple of interesting features that will be useful to brands seeking to engage with customers on Google+:

Circles – Brands will be able to add people who follow them to Circles just like any user. Brands will be able to use these Circles to the send targeted posts to their followers.

Direct Connect – Google has integrated brand pages into their search engine, creating an association between brand pages and search results. When someone performs a search for say “Google”, they will be able to click through to Google’s brand page to follow them. This is not automatically available to brand pages though – Google has an algorithm that associates brand pages with relevant search results. You can learn more about Google Direct Connect on the Google support website.

Scrapbook – Akin to Facebook, Google+ also has an image stream, called Scrapbook, which appears at the top of each brand page. Two things that set this apart from Facebook’s image stream are the ability to reorder photos (by editing the photo album associated with your page’s Scrapbook), and animated gif support (see Burberry’s Google+ brand page for inspiration on how this could be used).

Hangouts – Brands can create Hangouts and have any one of your followers join. Hangouts are a great tool to use to communicate directly with customers, and could be used as a tool to host trainings or even performing customer service. Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich had one of the more interesting uses of Hangouts this summer, hosting fireside chats with voters.

Verified Names – Google, like Twitter, has a verified brand page feature. There doesn’t seem to be a public way to apply for a verified profile, but you can get this by being added to a large number of circles. Google will then reach out to you to verify your identity. Hopefully, in the coming weeks, Google will demystify what their criterion is for selecting brands that they will allow to verify their identity.

Upon setting up a brand page, it is apparent that this feature is very new. It is safe to assume that Google will be rolling out a number of new features in the coming months, but here are some of the missing features that I was surprised did not roll out at launch:

Analytics – The biggest missing piece for me was an analytics platform. Google may be planning to integrate brand pages with Google Analytics, but the lack of an analytics tool at launch makes it difficult for people to understand how followers are really engaging with their content. Hopefully one will be rolled out in the near future.

Youtube integration – The video gallery feature on Google+ pages requires that you upload a video to add to your gallery. Youtube integration would have been a great feature out of the gate to promote videos, which brands are already hosting on the site.

If you want to learn more about brand pages, watch the video below:

Google+ brand page announcement

You can also read Google’s announcement blog posts to find some of the brand that are already making use of Google+ brand pages.