Our first full day of ad:tech NYC 2011 was a great day of inspiring keynotes and informational break-out sessions.  I felt a little old-school in covering the conference…no iPad to take notes and no connectivity whatsoever to tweet key highlights along the way.  So I have my notebook of barely legible handwriting for reference.  So much for technology.

In any event, the conference highlights for me were overwhelmingly in the keynote presentations.  ad:tech rounded up a great mix of innovative players and platforms that left us all inspired and ready to infuse those ideas and learnings into our client business.

One of the many memorable keynotes was from David Fischer, VP of Advertising and Global Operations at Facebook, speaking to a packed house on Wednesday.   He reinforced the notion that social shouldn’t exist as a line-item on a flowchart or something you check off your list.  He offered some very compelling reasons why social should be a core element to every marketing campaign.  Building a brand on Facebook is not just by Connecting (“like” buttons) or Engaging (inviting consumers to participate via comments and sharing), but by creating unique and useful brand experiences to Inspire consumers to engage on a deeper, even visceral level.   For example, Huggies in Hong Kong conducted a Baby-bus campaign that invited parents to post a photo of their baby to the Huggies FB fan page.  The babies with the most comments / likes would be featured on 10 double-decker busses throughout the city.

David labeled this example “Social by Design” because it tapped into something that parents already are doing and want to do (share photos of their adorable babies!).  The socially organic campaign was so powerful, in fact, that it led to a 4.2% increase in market share for the Huggies brand in Hong Kong.   A great example of a brand turning “likes” into revenue.

David made another great point to close the keynote that really stuck with me.  He said we shouldn’t think of our social media strategy as a sub-set of a marketing strategy.  It is a “people” strategy.  It’s about HOW you want to CONNECT with people….pure and simple.

If you’d like to see the ad:tech keynotes in their entirety, please visit this link.