Cocktail Hour: May 11, 2012

My goal this week was to not make one mention of Facebook. I wasn’t going to mention the hoodie, or the app store or how they are helping military families and veterans by introducing suicide prevention tools. I wasn’t going to mention any of this. Well, I failed miserably, obviously. And with the looming Facebook IPO next week, I won’t be getting any gold stars next week either. While Facebook continues to try to save people’s lives and make billions in the process, I’ll enjoy my new internet obsession combining my two loves — animated GIFs and snarky advertising copy.

What’s Wrong with Digital Awards (AgencySpy): Advertising awards season is in full swing, but are we judging the wrong things in digital? Campaigns that merely are transferred to a digital format shouldn’t set the standard for innovation, and “social media” sites that don’t engage an audience past the first visit can not possibly showcase the engagement and true conversations available in the medium. What are we judging digital campaigns on, and how can we set the bar to prove what’s possible with the tools?

Win the Pitch: Tips from MasterCard's "Priceless" Pitchman (Harvard Business Review Blog Network): We all want to win the pitch, but sometimes this can cause us to become blind to the real reason a brand is looking for an agency. Don’t just base the your pitch on the client’s business objective — find the client and the consumer’s hidden agenda. One that appeals to not only the financial department, but also the desires and and values of the client. Find the common thread between business and this hidden agenda, and you’ll understand how to win the pitch.

Agencies Ditch Blogs (Digiday): While many tout blogging as a core new business strategy, some agencies are doing away with their business blogs in favor of maintaining presumably less time-intensive social media accounts, such as Twitter or Pinterest. While time may be an issue, it begs the question: What is the intent of an agency blog? To share work? Industry insights? Updates on landing new accounts? The problem might not lie in the effort that goes into maintaining a blog, but how many agencies go about understanding the audience, objective and goals of the blog.

Social media data: time to stop just measuring and start learning? (Econsultancy): We measure the clicks, tweets, comments, likes, shares, etc., in order to show our clients how “engaged” and “popular” a social media campaign is. But as the author states, these monitoring tools “still have a way to go to unpick the chaotic beauty of human communication.” New hybrid tools are emerging, but as the numbers show, we have to find a way to interpret and learn the meaning behind these metrics.

5 Meaning Shifts Shaping Marketing Right Now (Duct Tape Marketing): While many focus on the upcoming tools and platforms shaping the marketing and communications field, we need to focus on the underlying behavioral shifts underlying these tools. How has Pinterest changed the way people browse and buy online? How has online shopping changed the way consumers purchase in-store? We may need to spend more time focusing not just on how to capitalize on utilizing these new platforms for marketing, but what these popular tools say about the way people want to connect, interact and search online.

What have you been reading this week?