Anytime you interact with your clients, you have the opportunity to make a statement about who you are and what it is that you do. Even the most mundane messages, such as "We've Moved" or "We've Changed Our Name (Again)", provide the opportunity to enhance your brand's image.

When SapientNitro recently relocated to a new office across town, they could have just as easily sent out the announcement via email or direct mail or by having each of their account managers call on their clients. Instead, they made the following video, and in doing so communicated more about who they are as an agency than an agency capabilities deck ever could. Bravo!

A few weeks ago, I had the following exchange on Twitter with the oft-brilliant Ben Kunz after retweeting a link to one of his blog posts:

Exhibiting his usual graciousness, Ben paid me a kind comment about the way I write headlines. It got me thinking about the very deliberate way in which I compose tweets containing links to articles, photos, video, etc. and inspired me to share my strategy.

If you want to do a better job of tweeting your links, you really only need to answer one question: Why should your Twitter followers take the time to click your link?

It is often cited that the average American views an estimated 3,000 advertising messages a day, but for individuals with even a moderate level of participation in social media networks that number is significantly higher; possibly doubled or tripled. After all, our tweets and Facebook status updates are really not that different than advertising messages; they represent pieces of information vying for our attention.

Despite our many technological innovations and "time-saving" mechanisms, the one thing we have yet to manufacture is more attention. Attention is, was, and presumably always will be a limited human resource. And so we are forced to make thousands of split second decisions every day about what we will give our attention to.

The...

Edward Boches, chief creative officer at Mullen (the agency that brought you this year's Brand Bowl), recently sat down with Ben Kunz at SxSW to discuss creativity and content strategy.

Regarding creativity and social media, Boches says

We're not in the business, necessarily, of telling stories anymore. We may be in the business of inspiring others to tell stories for us, soliciting their participation in the telling of stories, or perhaps allowing them to become the story themselves if you think in terms of social media. And it actually requires an entirely new mindset...

When it comes to developing content strategies for social media, Boches is adamant that you cannot understand social media's potential or how to be creative in the space unless you do it. He spends at least four hours a dayy somedays more between Twitter, blogging, interaction, learning, studying, thinking about content, and putting presentations together.

Says Boches,

I'm fond of saying that when we move into social media, a brand's product is not its product; its product is its content. [And brands should be asking themselves] how can I structure content that will be of value to that community, that will make them give me props and cred for helping them with that content?

We say,

Welcome to the world of the BFG Content Dept.!

If you've ever experienced the frustration of having to juggled USB-connected devices because your machine didn't have enough ports, then the InfiniteUSB would change your life. Though currently just a concept, we'd love to see this idea become the norm for all USB plugs.

Nice job spotting this one by our own Greg Tariff.

Today's SXSW session Beyond Ring Around The Collar: Reaching Tastemaker Moms focused on moms who don't fit the 1950s style ad world. As session leader Lindsay Maines of Rock and Roll Mama pointed out, "We're not just about the kids, the house and being harried office people. Moms still care about music and film. Marketing to them isn't going to make your record uncool."

Brands that extend themselves to this group are going to be successful, according to Maines and her session co-leader Heather Nolte of glamajama.com. The key is to recognize that the term "mommy bloggers" doesn't really explain this large group of women with vast interests. There are specific subsets within this group, such as bloggers who focus on home schooling, the green movement, etc. Often these groups just get lumped together, which doesn't do these women justice.

"Identify which market is valuable to you. Find out where they congregate and have conversations there. You build street cred when you're part of the community," Maines said. "Find your brand's unique proposition for moms that's beyond product."

Wondering where to go online to engage with moms? Facebook is a great place because of their huge adoption of the site, Maines said. Even those who aren't reading blogs or involved in other kinds of digital media are there. She also recommended playing around with keywords within Facebook advertising, noting success she had by including keywords like "James Dean" and "Catcher In the Rye."

Her other advice is not to discount Twitter. With its real-time search function and ability to drill down by zipcode, the potential to find new...