We’re back with our weekly recap of the interesting and inspiring, with a particular eye for what shifts and ideas brands should be tracking, evaluating and acting on. This is a collection of some standout business strategy, brand-building and digital media stories catching our attention.

Discussions Shaping Strategy, Creativity & Innovation 

• Marketers Have it Wrong: Forget Engagement. Customers Want Simplicity.
• CEOs Question Value of Marketing (when it’s disconnected from business results)
• Reversing the Tide of Declining Expectations (an argument that design can do more than just ‘solve problems’)
• Mobile: The Biggest Change to Hit Retailing in 50 Years
• Digital Payments: Still Too Costly for Small Business
• Don’t Indulge. Be Happy.
• The Digital Age, Memory and Learning (are our memories atrophying?)
• How Millennials Are Spending Their Precious Dollars on CPG
• Survey: Which Brands are Dream Clients for Agencies, and Which Are Nightmares?
• Mirror vs. Magnet: Percolate’s Approach to Brand Listening

Notable Ideas: New Products, Platforms and Projects 

• Meet the 2012 Creativity 50
• The Setup: What Do People Use to Get Stuff Done?
• How Amazon’s Same Day Delivery Plan Will Kill Your Local Stores
• How Parse Could Change the Way the Entire App Industry Works
• Fancy to Compensate Users for their Influence
• How Good Design Can Guide People to Smarter Money Decisions
• The Invisible Bank: How Kenya Has Beaten the World in Mobile Money
• Foap: A New App to Help You Sell Your iPhone Photos
• Spinlister (essentially AirBnB for bike rentals)
• “Overdressed”‘s author provides tips for avoiding fast fashion frenzy and still spending less on clothes

Brands, Companies and Entities of Note (some more obvious than others)n 

• Leap Motion: the Most Important New Technology Since the Smartphone? (a $70 gesture control system)
• Target, Neiman Marcus Enlist 24 CFDA Designers for Joint Collaboration
• The Shocking Original Logos of 10 Major Companies
• Kraft Mac & Cheese: Dinner Not Art
• Taco Bell vs. Old Spice: The Twitter War That Wasn’t
• How Taco Bell, Draftfcb Executed ‘Operation Alaska’
• Nike Challenges Ban On Its Promoted Tweets in the UK
• Coke’s Happiness Islands

Digital & Social Media News and Resources

• The State of Social Media and Social Media Marketing in the Second Half of 2012
• Evolving Ecommerce Checkout
• Designing for Context: The Multiscreen Ecosystem
• Zuckerberg: Mobile is Facebook’s Biggest Challenge
• Facebook Determined to Ruin the Last Good Thing About Facebook: Stalking
• Facebook Tab Engagement Drops Sharply with Timeline for Pages
• How to Determine Facebook and Twitter ROI
• In the Name of Consistency, Twitter Releases New Apps for iPhone and Android (consistency between mobile and desktop UX)
• Eliminating the Speed Delays with Mobile Web Shopping