Sour Grapes? No way!

I see a lot of award bashing all around. Some people are calling them retarded and some have listed down logical reasons why they don’t work well or are unfair. I love advertising awards, having won 2 recently. Here is a list of reasons that would convert the most determined of naysayers.

1. Awards provide legitimate reasons for everyone in the agency to get drunk – either to celebrate or to curse the organizers.
2. All the bosses fly away to France so the office is more chilled out.
3. Only real work is celebrated. Scam ads are just a myth. Nobody makes scam ads. I’ve never seen one.
4. Paying out bonuses to the hard working folks is such a retarded idea. Spending millions on award entries is an investment.
5. Working on this year’s award entries sharpen your skills – so that you can do a better job for next year’s award entries. Real work? What’s that? Oh! That silly stuff clients pay for…clients are silly – they don’t even know what to pay for.
6. All awards are judged fairly. The judges are genuine and any correlation with the numbers of wins going up due to someone from the group chairing the awards or a category is just coincidence. People who say otherwise are just sore losers.
7. Agencies that decide not to participate in awards are short sighted and do not care about the glory they can bring to their clients.
8. The small agencies that cannot afford to spend the money to participate and fly down dozens of folks for the awards don’t deserve to win. (There is a reason why they are small, right?)
9. Effectiveness? What’s that got to do with awards? Oh! You mean how good is your conversion. Yes, how else would you judge the planners?
10. Not convinced? Come on! Don’t be a spoilport! Well you don’t need to be – just because you did not win at one award show? There are 39 of them. Everyone wins. I don’t know of any agency that has not won awards.

Can you think of more?

1. Auctions: Ebay could be in for a tough time if Facebook decides to add a ‘social auctions’ feature. There is big money to be made of course and Facebook’s base of over 600 million people means that they will never be short of the next used iPad to be auctioned off. Of course they will use Facebook Credits as the currency for the options.
2. Voice Calls: Can Facebook be the Skype killer? Facebook could offer a Social Voice service that could simply mean tougher times ahead for Skype and a lot more money for Facebook.
3. Shopping: Social shopping anyone? Currently there are fledgling attempts by many companies to try and sell products directly off Facebook Pages but it is inconvenient and clumsy. Facebook will certainly look for more ways in which it can make Facebook credits popular. Creating ‘Facebook Shops/Stores’ with features that make shopping social and fun could give Amazon a run for it’s money – or maybe Amazon will just open a store front on Facebook as well.
4. Paid Apps: iOS of course had massive success with the App Store. Facebook could be working on a similar model where developers could choose to sell apps using Facebook credits as currency of course and Facebook getting a cut from every app sold.
5. Music: They have already started selling movies. What stops them from selling music – watch out iTunes!
6. Pages: Brands spend thousands and even millions trying to build a large community of fans and nurturing the same. What if Facebook starts charging a thousands dollars a year for some premium Facebook Page features. I am very sure thousands of brands will happily pay up. A robust Analytics solution could be just one of the many premium features possible.
7. Private corporate networks: Could the Facebook network be replicated within organizations where all discussions and engagement are closed and secure. This would be a viable alternative to the variety of ‘employee communication platforms’ that companies use.
8. Transactions: Once Facebook credits takes off what is there to prevent Facebook from taking a swipe at PayPal and trying to dominate the online commerce market ( a lot of which may happen on Facebook Shops anyway!)
9. Deals: Watch out Groupon! This cannot be far away.
10. Paid Mail service: Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail Storage – all charge around $20 per year for email service. Many may switch to Facebook once this service is available!
11. Photos: Facebook photos was one of the first ‘killer apps’ of Facebook and contributed massively to its growth. Could it provide additional services for printing pictures , personally designed albums and gifting? Sure it can!

Have more ideas for Facebook to make money? Share in comments please.

It is interesting to consider what people will do with easily available video chat when it is NOT possible to hide one’s identity. Well, we are about to find out- http://apps.facebook.com/chatrounds. Read more about it here.