Kenneth Briodagh

For cable and network television channels, April showers bring just one thing: upfront season. It's the time of year when the execs and sales people show off their new and continuing shows to advertisers, and try to get the bulk of the year's sales on the books. On April 11, IFC threw an Upfront party like these advertisers have never seen. It was dubbed the IFC Unexpectaganza, and boy, was it.

The South by Southwest Interactive, Film and Music Festival might be over, but the buzz is still reverberating for 3M. In addition to the brand’s Post-It Big Pads booth in the trade show hall (this is the brand’s second year at SXSW, but the first year in the convention center), people are still talking about the brand’s technology on display in the 3M Interactive Lounge, specifically “Jenny,” the brand’s holographic virtual presenter.

Every conversation in the event marketing industry eventually comes around to technology. You want to know what tools are out there to make your jobs easier, make your programs more successful and most crucially, make your target consumers love you the most. We have heard your clarion calls for help and now, with this monthly series, EM’s own Ken Briodagh will collect and codify the hottest, newest, most interesting, best (and sometimes worst) technological doohickeys available to you.

To tap into the growing Millennial market and promote its fresh fruit products, Del Monte Fresh deployed a series of Beach Bash activations over six days in Daytona Beach, FL, for Spring Break. The activations lived primarily at the Plaze Resort and Spa, but the brand spread itself around Daytona to make sure its reach went as far as possible.

So, it’s the New Year and just because Facebook has more citizens than the United States and Twitter has more real-time journalism than television doesn’t mean that the innovators in the social space have given up. The last few months have been all a-rumble with new social platforms going into and out of beta, and we’ve been looking into some of the most exciting. Some will of course crash and burn (remember Google Wave?), but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take a look.