Year: 2012

I/O, Google’s annual developer conference, is one of the best events marketers have never heard of. To accommodate the thousands who want to go to each year but can’t—recent I/Os have sold out all 6,000 seats in less than 30 minutes—the event has become much more digital. The conference now reaches millions of developers, virtually, […]

With its yearly Global Sales Experience—or GSX, as it’s better known—Cisco has evolved what was once a one-and-done annual event into a case study for maximizing the reach and impact of live+digital experiences. One recent GSX welcomed 20,000 attendees: 5 percent were in broadcast locations, 75 percent were in conference room viewing locations and 20 […]

Sports sponsorship activations can be limited by the square footage of a stadium or arena. But social media enables brands’ investments to soar way beyond the fences. To shake up its 27-year sponsorship of tennis’ U.S. Open, Evian served up a series of live and social media strategies that transformed every touchpoint at the tournament into […]

It was the first-ever reality show created by an advertiser, driven by consumers and broadcast on network TV. Ford’s “Escape Routes” was a six-part televised series of “Amazing Race”-style challenges in which six pairs of best friends vied for a Ford Escape and $100,000. Consumers supported their favorite contestants in their challenges online via live […]

Coke’s activation of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London was a global campaign that began with live crowdsourcing, continued with one of the biggest-ever customized music tie-ins and became one of the largest examples of sports and entertainment fusion. There were full-time social media amplification and global retail elements before and during the Games, and […]