Many people have asked the same question since its announcement at the Google I/O Conference this year – what is the Chrome Web Store? Although Google has made an effort to explain, some people, such as CNET’s Natalie Del Conte, are still confused about the Web Store’s intended functionality and purpose. As it has yet to be opened to the public, we only know so much. For now, we’ll have to take Google’s word.

According to Google, the Web Store will solve the problem of having too many programs open: too many places to go to retrieve the games, sites, and utilities you need or want at any given time.

The main points include:

• Web Store apps will be browser-based – they’ll run through the Chrome browser on whatever system you’re using
• The first batch of apps will be free, and will include the company’s own staples like Docs, Calendar, News, Maps, and Picasa
• Other apps will include Pandora, Plants vs. Zombies, Tweetdeck, NPR, LinkedIn, and magazine-like content from Sports Illustrated
• Developers can learn about the Web Store and develop their apps for it now. However, developers who upload their work to the store can only see their own apps, not those uploaded by others

After Google’s initial announcement at the I/O conference, Engaget even compared the impressive visuals to Apple’s apps, stating that the Chrome app experience “exceed[s] most anything we’ve seen on the iPad thus far.”

But what does this mean?

Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Marketplace are clearly the inspiration for this online application market. However, the Chrome Web Store will provide browser-based software supported across platforms. “Browser-based” is the key point. The implication: browser-based programs could supersede native apps due to their ability to work on any platform. While Apple devotees will likely be reluctant to use anything else, those looking for an integrated and easily navigated PC experience will, in theory, find that in Chrome.

Perhaps this is partly wishful thinking, but I do believe the Web Store will be capable of dominating the other two prominent app stores – both the Android Market and Apple’s App Store host proprietary, native apps. A browser that facilitates the app experience enables limitless options. In addition, developers for the Web Store will be charged minimal fees compared to what Apple charges, and are allowed to use various transaction programs (not just Google Checkout).

Further implications include the potential for porting apps from the Android Marketplace to Chrome on PCs. Also likely is Google’s ability to dominate the browser battles with the added functions of its Chrome Web Store.

As with everything, there’s another side to this story. Some people are still confused about the benefit of Google’s Chrome endeavor, questioning whether the apps for web sites in particular will truly provide an experience different from that of going directly to the site in a browser.

From what I’ve seen, it looks like it both A) enhances your web experience, and B) simplifies your PC experience as a whole. It pulls the things you love into one easily accessible location (think a vastly upgraded iGoogle + Google Reader), while also enabling you to access desktop programs like Tweetdeck in the same place as you access your magazines. This concept will no doubt appeal to the many people who rarely have fewer than eight applications open on their computers, myself included.

Through the Chrome Web Store, Google seems to admit that while its search function is unmatched, its ability to deliver quality apps to those searching for them falls short. The Web Store seems to compensate with its proposed searchable database specific to apps and its app ranking system, while significantly expanding our understanding of how a browser can – and will – be used in the near future.

[We are becoming “source-agnostic.”]
Each of these on-demand, video content aggregation & delivery apps/set-top boxes has their emerging pros & cons. But the one thing they all have in common is the fact that they are, essentially, “source-agnostic.” No longer do I have to know or necessarily care if the original program came from NBC, FOX, CBS or even YouTube.

Boxee Beta from boxee on Vimeo.

[Align to the content not necessarily the delivery vehicle.]
What this could mean for advertisers is the need to align more to the content itself in addition to (or, perhaps in the long term, in lieu of) the specific delivery vehicle (such as a network, a service, or a device). Since my on-demand content is now portable, I can watch Mad-Men live on AMC, through onDemand cable, my AppleTV, on my iPad, PC, or mobile phone. The only constant, regardless how or where I’m viewing the show, is the actual content.

[Will we have a surge of branded entertainment?]
Advertising that aligns to the content and not the delivery vehicle could take many forms. Branded-bumpers/pre-roll could preceded the program/show. Or we may start to see even more product placement/branded-entertainment since there is absolutely no way to strip out advertising/marketing that is so intertwined into the actual content of the program itself. The advertising/marketing, therefore, follows the content around as it gets delivered in whatever way the viewer chooses to consume it.

[Being Source-Agnostic can lead to greater advertising receptivity.]
In the end, there is still lots to figure out within the complex world of content programming and delivery. What I do know, though, is that the Emmys got me to download and start watching Modern Family (via Apple TV). I didn’t even know (until I looked it up) that Modern Family is broadcast on ABC. And since I’m watching the show commercial free, the brands that made a lasting impression on me were Apple (iPad) and Costco who were a non-intrusive and, actually, welcomed part of the branded entertainment experience.

Mike also posted this on his blog Harmonic Aftershock.

With over 150 million active mobile users of Facebook versus just over 2 million on Foursquare, one can’t help but wonder what this means to the darling of Location-Based Social Networks (LBSNs).

And while, Facebook did a nice job of integrating many its location-based “partners” at its announcement (Gowalla, Foursquare, Yelp, and MyTown), the language that the mega company used indicates that it is “guns blazing” when it comes to the concept of checking-in: “Maybe one day in 20 years time your children will go to Ocean Beach and their phone thing will start to vibrate and come alive and say ‘this is where your parents had their first kiss and this is the photo their friends took right afterward.’”

But Foursquare still has a few things that continue to make it stand out as the flagship LBSN:

1. Partnerships: Foursquare has built up an abundance of partnerships with media companies and brands that make the act of checking-in that much more rewarding and motivating.

2. Post Check-in Experience: Dennis Crowley’s tenacious focus NOT on the act of checking-in, but on what happens after you check-in will help sustain Foursquare’s differentiation.

3. Social Currency: While Facebook is emphasizing the notion of seeing who else is at locations when you check in with Facebook Places, that’s not the primary motivator of why people check in. Foursquare’s built in “social gaming” experience creates an addicting friendly competition.

The results of Hill Holliday’s recent poll on why people check-in to LBSNs underscores point #3: People want to earn social currency which is not something Facebook mentioned in their announcement.

There’s no doubt that tonight’s announcement from Facebook will have a dramatic effect on the social culture of the check-in…but it doesn’t mean that they will own it. If Foursquare plays its cards right, there’s still the potential for it to become as big as Twitter and Facebook.

Mike also posted this on his blog Harmonic Aftershock.

Much has been written about Zappos’ business model and the company’s “social voice”. And while I spend most of my time working with national, large-scale brands, the businesses that have been turning my head lately have been those that are closest to home. Their use of social media on a local-scale creates the perfect storm for a relationship: intimate, genuine, approachable, and human.

I look at companies like Goodies who has become an embedded part of Danvers, Massachusetts’ “real world” community. The brand lives and breathes “social” – not because of its Facebook page, but because of its presence at town events, fairs, and kids’ birthday parties.

And then there’s b.good whose back-story is as genuine as they come. The company isn’t asking you to like them on Facebook or Follow them on Twitter — They are asking you to “become a part of their family.” Their social channels are merely ways to stay virtually connected to a brand that radiates community from the moment you walk into one of their restaurants. (Incidentally, they’ve grown to 7 locations).

I recently found out that a friend’s new store (Skoah) just opened because of a post he did on Facebook. He will be successful if, like Goodies and b.good, his customer experience (at every touch point) is nothing short of positive and makes people feel good.

Don’t believe the hype.
Brands (and marketers) get overly hyped up about social media because it’s often synonymous with word-of-mouth.  And since referrals are the “Holy Grail” to many businesses’ growth, there’s a misperception that simply establishing a presence on Facebook + Twitter will do amazing things.

Focus on great products & service.
As fundamental as this is, it’s great products and great service that create the kind of sustained customer relationships that generate referrals through word-of-mouth. Companies whose very DNA is built from and breathes this are the ones who will get the most of social media as a means to further energize loyal customers into brand advocates.

Relationships do matter…a lot.

Mike also posted this on his blog Harmonic Aftershock.

It’s not that way with everybody, though.

This became quite clear to me during a dinner party a few weeks ago. I was surrounded by several well-educated couples that read books, pay their mortgage on time, and can assemble a gas grill without too much difficulty. The subject turned to things like Facebook and Twitter, so of course I chimed in with my two cents. And then, I very naturally spouted off a few more related terms, to keep the conversation going.

Silence.

What did I say, you ask? Nothing fancy. Things we all talk about every day. But other people don’t talk about these things every day. And I know this, because here is what I said, followed by the response:

LinkedIn
“They make those metal fences, right?”

WordPress
“Is that some kind of panini?”

Apps
“We enjoy the stuffed mushrooms.”

Foursquare
“Didn’t you play that in elementary school?”

Augmented Reality
“Reality tv is stupid. Especially that show about the Kardashian sisters.”

Google Chrome
“It’ll rust if you leave it out in the rain.”

Wiki
“We’ve never visited Hawaii.”

HootSuite
“Oh, that cute little owl that said ‘Give a hoot, don’t pollute.”

StumbleUpon
“Did you fall down?”

Tumblr
“Did you fall down again?”

Needless to say, dinner ended quickly. And I skipped dessert, because I didn’t want to mistakenly blurt out something like “spumoni.”

So if you’re ever at a dinner party, and this happens to you, just give me a call. Better yet, announce that you “have to share something on FriendFeed.”

That’ll throw them into a frenzy.

Advertisers often struggle over what benchmarks to use or whether benchmarks are even relevant. Here’s what we did to provide accountability and justify the expenditure.

Generally, we can define three classes of benchmarks:

1. Predictive: what we expect to happen.
2. Requirement: what needs to happen.
3. Aspirational: what we hope to happen.

Predictive benchmarks are forecasts based on similar activities or on models that extrapolate from activities that are dissimilar in known ways. Usually, the quality spectrum in this class of benchmarks begins with industry averages on the worst end – they’re especially bad for online measurement, diverse industries and branding campaigns – and bottom-up statistical models on the best-in-class end of the spectrum. Predictive benchmarks are most useful for optimization. They are less useful for evaluation.

For our social media project, we set predictive benchmarks for key operational metrics. The end outcome might have been a new beast, but not all the moving parts driving to that beast were new. Mass media still needed to drive qualified leads to the site. Rich media display ads still needed to engage. The user experience still needed to satisfy. We could set some of these benchmarks using a blend of statistical and judgment-based predictive models.

Requirement benchmarks define what needs to happen. In the simplest case, a DR campaign might have a threshold cost per conversion that the finance group determines to be profitable.

Requirements might also come from strategic plans. If a firm has a strategic goal of 90% customer satisfaction and is currently at 70%, for example, that translates to needing to convert 20% of its customers from not satisfied to satisfied. If the firm projects 10 million customers during the relevant period and has allocated an incremental $8,000,000 across marketing and service business units to solve the satisfaction problem, that means marketing activities need to meet a hurdle of $4 per incremental satisfied customer.

Requirement benchmarks can also be the performance of the best alternative activity. In a champion vs. challenger approach, each test tactic is required to perform at least as well as the best tactic to date. When a firm forays into the online space for the first time, requirement benchmarks can come from offline tactics. This may require measuring offline outcomes from online activities, but we should be doing that already if the offline outcomes are business relevant.

At minimum, all activities are required to achieve some incrementality. A firm whose awareness metrics are stuck, for example, could have a requirement benchmark of “any statistically significant increase.” This definition of a benchmark can be especially useful for secondary objectives that are not business-critical.

In our social media example, requirements contributed to our benchmarks. We looked at a prior campaign that was very different but had some overlapping outcomes. We said our cost per outcome had to be better than that campaign’s cost pers, because that campaign was seen as not very successful. Also, since the client’s brand metrics were flat, we also required that the program drive some statistically significant increase in those metrics, knowing that any increase would beat the best efforts to date.

Aspirational benchmarks say “there’s an elephant in the room.” It recognizes that even if there’s no basis for forecasting results or knowing what is required, there may still be some outcome that will be seen as failure and some outcome that you can defend as success, even if you can’t draw a bright line between the two. What would fail the laugh test in the boardroom? That is a lower bound. Then ask what number would look good in the final presentation? Keep trimming the gap between the upper and lower bounds, then from that range, pick a conservative but tenable value.

Although our client didn’t say how many members they wanted in the community we were building, they had definite reactions to specific hypothetical numbers. What about $500 per member? Clearly too expensive. What about $5 per member? No one would doubt the value of that, they said. We winnowed that gap down, blended in the requirements-based benchmarks, extrapolated possible ranges of outcomes from our prediction-based operational benchmarks and ended up with practical, meaningful benchmarks.

The bottom-line question is, when the clients signs off on the expenditure, what do they expect to get for it? Sometimes, there really may be no way to benchmark the outcome of money spent. But in that case, there might be a better way to spend our money.

The season premier of Mad Men made us dust off our family album and reach for the pictures from the agency’s first year (which are best viewed to the sounds of the special Mad Men station on Pandora Radio.)

Hill Holliday officially opened for business on May 13, 1968 in 1,500 square feet of space on the top floor of 143 Newbury Street. The company had no clients and no billings – just the conviction that a combination of ability, hard work and determination would enable them to make it, to succeed where others had failed.

There were also no employees, just the four partners: Jay Hill, Alan Holliday, Jack Connors and Steve Cosmopulos. Operating funds were a bit tight. For floor covering, one of the partners found a bargain on some indoor-outdoor carpeting. Another found a good deal on six slightly used metal desks (they were sure the staff would be growing soon). Steve brought in his own drafting table and, all of a sudden, the place started to look like an ad agency.

A labor union strike at the phone company almost derailed the agency’s launch. One of the unions at the New England Telephone Company (predecessor to Verizon) was on strike, and it was impossible for the fledgling firm to get phone service installed. The solution? A roll of dimes. There was a pay phone on the sidewalk in front of the office at 143 Newbury Street and Jack Connors and his partners monopolized it until the strike was over. A local toll call was 10 cents.

Each summer, our interns partner with an organization in the Greater Boston area to volunteer their time and service. Last Friday, 37 of our interns partnered with the Esplanade Association to help clean up the park along the Charles River. The volunteer coordinators from the Esplanade kicked off the day with a history and overview of the Storrow Memorial, and then the interns got to work. Over the course of the day, the interns trimmed nearly half a mile of weeds along the river’s edge, cleaned up litter, and provided playground maintenance.

(photography: Lawrence Wang)

When Lebron James announced his move to Miami in an hour-long ESPN special, the entire state of Ohio was upset. Most notably, the Cleveland Cavaliers Owner, Dan Gilbert, who wrote an “Open Letter to Cavs Fans” and posted it on the team’s Web site.

The following week on the ESPN’s ESPY awards, Steve Carell and Paul Rudd performed a spoof of Lebron’s 60-minute TV spectacle. Their mockery of “The Decision” featured Carell announcing that he would be leaving Chili’s and taking his appetite to the Outback Steakhouse.

We saw an impromptu marketing opportunity. The morning after the skit aired, Dave Gardiner and Joe Berkeley asked for ideas that would capitalize on the buzz. Within the hour, Steven Grskovic, Frank Cartagena and Dan Jordan had written and art directed an “Open Letter to Steve Carell,” which mimicked the irate language of Dan Gilbert and used his now infamous Comic Sans font.

(As seen on Yahoo! Sports, Examiner, CBS Sports, MSNBC, HollywoodNews, E!,  AgencySpy and Facebook)

Operation Hoodsie Cup officially begins today and runs through September 6. At various times, Boston Police Officers will drive the BPD Hood Ice Cream Truck through Boston neighborhoods to hand out Hoodsie Cups and engage with youth. The Hood truck stops will take place along pre-determined routes in each police district throughout the City of Boston and will be announced via BPDNews.com.

Hill Holliday developed the creative concept and design for Operation Hoodsie Cup and partnered with Boston Police and Hood to create the BPD-designed ice cream delivery truck.