Method, a leading brand experience agency, today announced the appointment of TV industry veterans Geoff Katz and John Gilles as Vice Presidents of Media and Entertainment. The latest additions to Method’s growing executive team, Katz and Gilles will drive Method’s business strategy and development in the interactive television sector and focus on providing its expanding roster of media and entertainment clients with cutting-edge design, business strategy, and technical expertise.
“As the firm behind the development of groundbreaking interactive experiences for major brands such as Showtime and Comcast, Method has a formidable presence in the media & entertainment industry,” said Robbie Vann-Adibé, Method Co-CEO. “Geoff Katz and John Gilles will use their deep collective expertise in interactive television to help our clients extend their brands and take advantage of new types of media and entertainment technology.”
Geoff Katz brings over a decade of experience working with pioneering interactive television companies like TiVo and DIRECTV, and breakthrough emerging media platform companies such as Liberate, Excite@Home, and PacketVideo. At TiVo, Katz focused on product design for new broadband applications and services for the TiVo platform. As a producer in the Advanced Services & Content group at DIRECTV, he was a driving force behind the creation and launch of DIRECTV Active, an interactive television channel on the DIRECTV Network that provides consumers with data-driven services, programming promotions and advertising.
Katz has contributed to two Primetime Emmy Award-winning interactive television projects. In 2006, his work on the TiVo Service was recognized for excellence by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for Outstanding Achievement for Enhanced or Interactive Programming. In 2004, while working at Zetools (acquired by Tandberg Television in 2006), Katz produced an interactive version of ABC Television’s ‘Celebrity Mole: Yucatan’ for the Microsoft Windows Media Center platform. That project was awarded the 2004 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement for Enhanced Television. Currently, Geoff is the chairman of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Interactive Media Peer Group Emmy Awards Committee, responsible for defining and managing the process that will result in the 2008 Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media, which will be presented in September 2008 at the 60th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles.
John Gilles brings over 18 years of interactive media, strategy and business development experience to Method, having led interactive media for three cable networks, Comcast-owned G4TV, TechTV and its predecessor, ZDTV. Gilles is recognized internationally for his work in developing some of the industry’s most innovative and award-winning digital media products, including VOD, broadband video channels, rich-media web sites, interactive television applications, games, mobile applications, and interactive program guides. Most recently he was responsible for helping launch Gameplay HD, the high-definition, video-game oriented Rainbow Media-owned cable channel. He previously served as a producer and reporter on MSNBC’s “The Site,” and was a technology correspondent for Wired News and Gannett Newspapers. He is Vice Chair of the Producers Guild of America Bay Area Chapter and member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Interactive Media Peer Group, as well as frequent mentor for the American Film Institute’s Digital Content Laboratory.
About Method
Method is a brand experience agency that helps business leaders harness the competitive power of design. With deep expertise in research, strategy, design and technology, Method offers a rigorous, intelligent approach to solving increasingly complex brand problems in the physical and digital realms. Method has enabled over 150 businesses to outperform competitors through unified branding and communications, compelling user experiences, and successful product and service development wherever customers can be found: on the web, mobile, print, advanced television and within immersive environments. The firm has a blue-chip client roster that features brands such as Sony, Gucci, Microsoft, Visa, Comcast, Nike, Adobe, and Yahoo!, among others. Method has offices in San Francisco, New York and London.
