Mint Digital

The stunning Finsbury Town Hall was the venue for last week's 2Screen 2011 - Mint's annual feast of all things connected TV. We had a blast, we hope you did too!

It was terrific to see the event grow so dramatically in the space of a year (we doubled our audience from 2010). The social TV conversation has raised its game too, with a brilliant bunch of talks from Andy Hood of AKQA, David Flynn of Remarkable, Declan Caulfield of Starling and Russell Davies of R/GA, all wonderfully compèred by BBC Click's LJ Rich.

Of course, as befits a 2Screen affair, the real energy of the evening took place on our second screens - the #2Screen hashtag is packed with gems and well worth having a dig through. This year we decided we wanted to take the kind of split-attention behaviour we've become used to at conferences and push it a step further. Our Footnotes app lived on the 2Screen mobile site and added an extra layer of engagement to the speakers' presentations, with a steady trickle of additional nuggets of information and useful links throughout the night. It was a fun experiment, if you got a chance to play with it we'd love to know what you thought.

We'll be back very soon with some lovely shiny videos of all the talks from the event, but for now I wanted to give a quick roundup of some of the 2Screen write-ups that caught my eye over the past week:

The countdown to 2Screen 2011 is almost over. Our sell-out event will be kicking off at 6.30pm tonight with awesome speakers, an exceptionally good-looking audience, booze, nibbles and good times galore. You can follow our #2Screen hashtag to keep up with the excitement. We love it when a plan comes together.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been exploring the lay of the land with a look at how content creators are approaching connected TV and an overview of what the new levels of audience data will mean for the industry.

But I’ve saved what is perhaps the trickiest area for last. Over to Google’s Eric Schmidt again - speaking at this year’s MacTaggart lecture - for a quick introduction:

“Now we’re riding a second, much bigger, wave of interactivity. It’s a convergence of TV and Internet screens. This time the interaction isn’t happening via your red button - it’s on the web through your laptop, tablet or mobile. But most important of all, this time it’s social.”

At Mint HQ we’re busy gearing up for our biggest ever 2Screen, so I thought I’d dig a little deeper into yesterday’s discussion on what happens when TV and the web get together.

It’s interesting to explore how the data that comes out of internet-connected TV and second screen apps is going to affect our viewing experiences in the future. TV commissioning today is still in thrall of the dreaded ‘overnights’, sourced from a supposedly representative slice of the population. It’s that BARB data that determines whether a show survives or disappears.

What will happen when broadcasters can access the huge amounts of data that will emerge from an audience watching on web-enabled TVs? Everything will be measurable: how many of us are on Facebook while we watch X-Factor? What programmes are viewers switching to after Downton Abbey? How many are actually watching, and engaging, with the ad breaks? This kind of audience access is unprecedented, and the minutiae of programme analytics will be pored over by commissioners, much as it already is by web entrepreneurs. How will that affect decision-making, and scheduling?

Two screen, three screen, dual screen, connected TV, IPTV, social TV, smart TVs... we might not know quite what to call it yet, but the intersection of TV and the web isn't a thing of the future anymore. 60% of TVs sold in John Lewis are internet-enabled, and the store expects this to rise to 80% by Christmas. Google TV is set to launch in the UK in early 2012, with YouView not far behind. Two screen is about to go mainstream. (There's even a rather excellent conference on the subject in London this week.)

On Monday night BAFTA hosted a panel discussion on what the future of connected TV means to content creators. Suveer Kothari from Google TV, Tom Williams from BBC IPTV, Kate Vogel from the Tate and Richard Welsh from Bigballs Films discussed everything from VOD, to multi-platform storytelling, to Carling using camels to deliver beer in Yorkshire.

We’re deep in the midst of a design overhaul of the Mint site at the moment (keep an eye out for changes coming soon…), and I’ve been seeking inspiration from across the world of digital media. In the spirit of Jim Jarmusch’s advice – “don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it” – I thought I’d share some of my favourite agency sites from across the web.

1. Razorfish

The Human Jukebox

Sometimes crazy works. Pause, an audio equipment store in Stockholm, took guerilla marketing tactics to the extreme (with the help of its agency, Åkestam Holst) by transforming the company’s CEO into a walking human jukebox. Pause wanted to spread the word about their customised sound systems with the craziest “show, don’t tell” stunt they could think of. They invited journalists to see CEO Fredrik Hjelmquist ingest the ‘gutPOD’, a custom-designed wireless receiver in a capsule; while customers could pick songs on Spotify for the belly beatbox to play.

Admittedly, the concept doesn’t quite work - Hjelmquist had to use a microphone and speakers for the music to be heard - but the “Is this for real?” buzz more than paid off: Sales soared by 112% at Pause stores, while visits to their website jumped more than 600%. Just don’t think about what happens when the gutPOD, er, runs its course...