Facebook ‘Studio Awards’ to Flatter Advertisers into Submission

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Facebook has worked out a new strategy to try and strengthen its relationship with advertisers and the advertising industry: Flattery.

The social media company is preparing to award the first Facebook Studio Awards, created to recognize the most creative and most successful social marketing on its site, and has just extended the submission deadline to allow more ad agencies to participate.

According to Facebook, the awards will reward “a new kind of creativity,” with the official award site explaining, “Marketing in a connected world requires campaigns that are grounded in social insights, real connections and authentic conversations.” The Facebook Studio Awards have been created “to recognize the agencies and brands that are pioneering this shift.” It’s an idea echoed by one of the judges, Susan Credle, who is Chief Creative Officer at ad agency Leo Burnett North America, who believes that the awards will recognize those trying to bring “creativity and delight and actual storytelling” to social marketing.

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Judging criteria for the awards will include how social the marketing campaign is, how much it integrates with both other media and Facebook’s own marketing products (“Does the campaign take advantage of Facebook’s full potential?” as the site puts it, apparently aware of the importance of underscoring its own brand at all times) and how easy it is for people to interact with, and share, the campaign’s content.

Boasting “hundreds of submissions from 40 countries,” the deadline for the awards has been pushed to January 15 in order to allow as many entries as possible, with a panel of judges drawn from top ad agencies (as well as Facebook’s Director of Global Creative Solutions, Mark D’Arcy) meeting next month to select the winners. I doubt I’m the only one secretly hoping for an upset in favor of “Mob Wars.”

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Graeme McMillan is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @Graemem or on Facebook at Facebook/Graeme.McMillan. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.