Cocktail Hour: February 17, 2012

Surely you’ve been inundated with enough Valentines this week, but from all of us at The Agency Post, we love you readers! Thanks for spending time with us each day. I’d say we’d love to stare into your eyes longingly, but since you’re already here reading, we’re kind of staring at each other already, aren’t we? #awkward

At least for a good post-Valentine’s laugh, here are a few great tongue-in-cheek advertising-appropriate (or inappropriate?) valentines from Big Orange Slide.

This is what else we’ve been reading this week:

No Longer an Awkward Teenager: Gamification Grows Up (TechCrunch): People like games. Games are fun. Gamification makes seemingly simple tasks more fun. It’s predicted that gamification will reach $2.8 billion in direct spending by 2016. What does that mean for marketing? How are we growing past simply checking in and earning a discount? There are multitudes of opportunities for gamification that are waiting to happen.

Planning Your Content Marketing: Bricks vs. Feathers (Convince and Convert): In the content marketing game, what is most important? You could argue that every piece is important in its own way, and you’d probably be right. In this post, Chris Sietsema compares the “bricks” (the white papers, podcasts and events) with the “feathers” (the status updates, tweets and posts) and how they all fit in together with marketing. Which are more important? It’s all how you build it.

Designer Myopia: How to Stop Designing for Ourselves (Smashing Magazine): When we see a campaign or design, there’s something in our heads that goes off (whether intentionally or not): “If this were mine, I would have done this differently...”. Too often, we may judge based on first sight, and not after taking the user habits or intention into account. This post points out that while of course we want to do our best work, we’re not always the target audience.

Nerve Damage, Comprehension and Content (Contents Magazine): A lot of advertising is based on intangibles, and making people feel a certain way. Well, the intangible is tangible. Take a look at the science behind why we have the responses that we do when we see certain words or images. Plus, it’s a great set of talking points for you that allow you to drop “neocortex” in your next meeting. SCIENCE!

Mix & Match Targeting in the Google Display Network (Marketing Land): Get a great tutorial on the Google Display Network and targeted advertising. This includes targeting by topic, keyword and even mobile device. Are you maximizing your online advertising? This can offer you a few tips on where you may be missing an opportunity.

What have you been reading this week?