Kudo Tsunoda, General Manager for Xbox Kinect, took the audience at the Cannes Lions festival on a journey the path his team took to launch Kinect. Originally, Xbox started off as a powerful gaming console for the 18-35 year old male, and Kudo and his team were asked to come up with a concept that would expand the audience, make Xbox more approachable, and more family friendly. The development of Kinect included a method acting approach.

As social media marketing moves off of the slide lines and into the heart of campaigns marketers are working to understand the right mix between paid, earned, and owned media. At the Cannes Lions festival , Initiative shared global research it developed on paid, earned, and owned media. They started by simply defining the approaches: Paid media is measurable media, channels that are available for sale. Examples of this include TV buys and search and display advertising.

Big Hollywood names and long-time storytellers Brian Grazer and Ron Howard took the stage at Imagine 2011 with Microsofts Stephen Kim, GM Global Creative Solutions. Grazer and Howard are the Academy Award-winning filmmakers and founders of Imagine Entertainment, which has given us TV programs like 24 and movies like A Beautiful Mind. They discussed their partnership and how they play off of their strengths.

Jeffrey Cole, Director, Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future , has spent the last 11 years tracking TV usage. In the next three to four years Cole believes that screen time will rise from 30 hours per week to 50 hours per week. We have seen recent examples of explosions in screen time with this years Super Bowl finally surpassing the viewership on the final episode of MASH in 1983.

Jeffrey Cole, Director, Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future , has spent the last 11 years tracking TV usage. In the next three to four years Cole believes that screen time will rise from 30 hours per week to 50 hours per week. We have seen recent examples of explosions in screen time with this years Super Bowl finally surpassing the viewership on the final episode of MASH in 1983.

The war for the living room is on. The gaming industry is going beyond the 18-34 year-old male by building partnerships with best of breed providers )think Netflix, Last.fm( and social partners )think Facebook, Twitter( and building connected entertainment experiences like Xbox Kinect. Microsofts Ken Simon spoke to the rise of two things,

Nancy Hill, 4As CEO, kicked off the morning at the Transformation 2011 conference with energy and optimism. She addressed how the industry is growing and how the advertising industry is back. She backed up her optimism with facts around the Super Bowl, letting us know that this years advertising placements experienced the earliest sellout in the history of the event and the expectation that next years sellout will happen even faster. It was the most watched broadcast,

Nancy Hill, 4As CEO, kicked off the morning at the Transformation 2011 conference with energy and optimism. She addressed how the industry is growing and how the advertising industry is back. She backed up her optimism with facts around the Super Bowl, letting us know that this years advertising placements experienced the earliest sellout in the history of the event and the expectation that next years sellout will happen even faster. It was the most watched broadcast,

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a Ragan Communications conference in Redmond focused on PR and social media and how these worlds collide. PR and social havent always gotten along, but now its clear that the industry and many major corporations are embracing the two disciplines as vital partners. Much of the conference focused on business to consumer or B2C marketing with comments tossed around that business to business or B2B social marketing is difficult.