I/O 2012: Innovation for Agencies

Google I/O 2012, held last month in San Francisco, was a veritable smorgasbord of innovation – from Chrome’s iOS debut to the unveiling of the Nexus 7, from the launch of Google+ Events to our most ambitious product demo yet, our annual developers’ conference wowed its 5,500 attendees with over 130 technical sessions, 20 code labs, and 155 Sandbox partners. This year, we were also pleased to introduce I/O Live, which brought each day’s events and announcements directly to our agency partners via live streaming, along with exclusive online content such as backstage interviews, product demos, some easter egg surprises, and a live blog on +Creative Sandbox with Christian Haas, Executive Director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.



AdWeek’s Tim Peterson recently sat down with Torrence Boone, Managing Director of Agency Business Development – Americas, to understand how a developers’ conference can hold as much significance for agencies as it does for tech enthusiasts. Long a passionate advocate of integrating digital platforms into the agency landscape, Torrence explains:

On agencies, digital, and Google platforms:

We believe that we’re creating this amazing toolkit, or palette, for agencies to do really fantastic things. And we have also seen agencies become a lot more technologically oriented, and they are investing in technology-driven approaches to the way that they’re developing campaigns.


On collaborating with agency partners:

We absolutely spend a lot of time with agencies in soliciting their input and perspective on existing products and on our product road map…They bring fantastic insights at scale because they’re working across various industries and they’re confronting different marketing problems on a day-to-day basis, so we actively solicit their perspective. Their feedback is a powerful source for us in driving the innovation engine that we have going at Google.


On the introduction of I/O Live:

The time felt ripe…to really elevate the new things that we’re introducing because, again, they enable this amazing opportunity to create new experiences and highlight for them that it’s not just about developers; that Google, even though fundamentally we’re a technology company, our desire is to allow agencies in partnership with their clients to create beautiful, seamless, immersive experiences that connect brands to consumers. Particularly given the nature of the announcements this year, it felt particularly important to amp up the visibility of the conference with our agency partners and get them in the mindset of thinking of Google I/O as a way for them to stay on the cutting edge and make sure they’re constantly pushing the envelope with what they’re doing for their clients.

Check out the full interview to learn more about how agencies are leveraging Google platforms, and what we’re doing to help take that innovation to the next level!



Posted by Kelly Duane, Americas Agency Team