It’s been a few months since we announced the launch of Project Beacon, our new agency initiative to create deeper and more productive relationships with start-ups.

Since then we’ve been meeting with tons of great, young companies that are creating new marketing-related products and services -- more than fifty companies reached out about participating in the program.

Today we’re excited to announce the twelve companies we’ve selected as the first round of Beacon partners:

CampusLive, CityVoter, Cognitive Match, Crowdly, Crunch (by ChoiceStream), Hitchery, Linkable Networks, MyCityWay, Nanigans, SecondScreen Networks, ShareThis, and ThinkFlood.

We didn’t go into our evaluations with any prescribed notions about the kinds of companies we’d select, but now that we have chosen our partners, it’s become clear that there are four thematic areas we’re pursuing.

Cognitive Match, Crunch, and Linkable Networks are companies that improve ad decisioning.

SecondScreen Networks and ThinkFlood are multi-screen solutions, connecting the television viewing experience to smartphones and tablets.

MyCityWay, Hithery, and CityVoter are solutions for mobile/local programs.

And of course social. Crowdly, Nanigans, ShareThis and CampusLive each tackle a different aspect of marketing in social spaces.

In the next few days here on the HHCC blog we’ll be doing a feature on each of the Beacon partners and what we’re hoping to accomplish with the collaboration.

If you’d like to know more about Project Beacon check out beacon.hhcc.com.