Cocktail Hour: September 28, 2012

Each week, The Agency Post curates the top marketing-related news of the week, musings on the advertising industry and the creative work worth your attention. Here’s the scoop.

HEADLINES

The Comeback Kid?: MySpace previews a beautiful and streamlined design for the music-focused social network. The redesign will allow users to attach photos to playlists, and it will integrate with Facebook and Twitter.

Endorsements for Professionals: LinkedIn launched a new service allowing connections to basically like or “endorse” a professional’s skill. You will also be allowed to recommend skills and expertise that should be added to the individual’s profile.

MUSINGS

I’ve Drunk the Kool-Aid, Which is Why I Hate...: Is advertising becoming a business more concerned with headlines and awards, rather than creativity and innovation? While other businesses, including the tech world, create technology that makes businesses more efficient and effective, the advertising industry is still focusing on creating ads that bring accolades to the agency’s work to impress the client and other agencies. While the author denies hating advertising, he does challenge the industry to change the way it views the purpose of advertising. [The Musings of an Opinionated Sod]

Authorship: What and How and Why is It So Important to Google?: This week, Google seemed to renew its interest and support of Authorship, adding a new way to implement authorship and emailing users verification of authorship. AuthorRank will ultimately become Google’s way of forcing publications and writers to use Authorship in order to show the site has quality content that should rank. Are you using Authorship as part of your content strategy? [State of Search]

Why Text Messaging Still Thrives Despite Smartphones, Twitter and WhatsApp: While apps and responsive design have been at the forefront of mobile marketing, SMS and MMS should not be overlooked. Only 16 percent of mobile phones worldwide are app-enabled, and 7.8 trillion text messages were sent last year. The Senior Vice President of Sybase 365, Howard Stevens, says, “If you’re a major global brand and all you use are apps for marketing, you’ll miss out on 70-80% of your customers.” Are you ignoring mobile messaging in your marketing campaigns? [Forbes]

CREATIVE

- Target brings shopping and sharing to video, allowing viewers to buy products within the commercial. Directed by Phil Abraham and featuring Kristen Bell, the short films will debut on October 2nd.

- In a great display of brand banter, AMC Theatres and Oreo battle it out over Twitter.

- Child Focus, a foundation for missing children in the EU, launches NotFound.org. Using a simple snippet of HTML code, a website can register to have its 404 error pages showcase images and information about a missing child.

http://vimeo.com/49843189

- Curious about whether some of the top tech companies are profitable? How Do They Make Money showcases companies’ revenue models and success.

STATS

45% of consumers use a T.V. as their primary web video screen. [AllThingsD]

Less than 1% of purchases can be tracked to social links. [Marketing Land]

67% of respondents said they are more likely to buy if they visit a mobile-friendly site. [Google / Mobile-friendly sites turn visitors into customers]