-After spending less than a year as CCO at Santa Monica-based Pitch, Eric Springer–aka, the creative force behind VW’s “The Force” spot–will be joining Draftfcb Orange County as EVP/CCO, effective Jan 2. Once he joins, Springer (above) will also be tasked with building a new “creative beachhead” for DFCB Los Angeles. We still prefer his party picture from the last time.

-DDB Canada (specifically the Vancouver office) has extended its AOR relationship with the Canadian Tourist Commission for another five years. The agency was picked following a “rigorous RFP process” that narrowed down the field from 35 to five Canadian agencies. No word on who they were, though. DDB Canada and CTC’s working relationship dates back to 2002.

-Gerry Graf, Tor Myhren, KBS+ Ventures’ Darren Herman and Percolate CEO/Barbarian Group alum Noah Brier are “Brand Geniuses” according to Gotham‘s “100 Most Powerful New Yorkers” list. link

-If you’ve ever dreamed of going into glassblowing but were too scared to actually try it, check out this app from the Martin Agency and unit9 that promotes the Virgina Museum of Fine Arts and its exhibit with famous glassblower, Dale Chihuly, called “Breathe Art into Life.”

-L.A.-based agency, mOcean, which just wrapped up its third and final “Ladies of Movember” episode and raised nearly $17.5K for the cause, has also created an interactive site around the film, Lincoln. link

-Walton | Isaacson has moved its L.A. office to a 17,500 square-foot space in Culver City.

-Blast Radius has developed a winter cocktail app for Bacardi. link

-Instagram voluntarily nixed its Twitter photo integration. link

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TBG’s latest move is part of the agency’s ongoing attempt to beef up its strategy department, which also includes head of strategic planning and former Hot Ad (Wo)Man of the Day, Noah Brier. Anyhow, Gulland arrives from Droga5, where he spent two years and eventually worked his way up to strategy director, handling clients including Puma, Rhapsody and Activision. Gulland, in fact, served as strategist on the Gold Lion-winning Puma “Hardchorus” campaign.

Prior to Droga5, Gulland spent 18 months as a communications strategist at Anomaly and worked on Converse, Virgin America, LimeWire, and several Coca-Cola clients. While there, Gulland perhaps most notably served as media strategist/co-creator of Converse “Domination,” which won a Gold Effie in the Media Idea category in 2009.

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However, such answers weren’t going to satisfy most CMOs. These individuals live by a P&L with a bonus structure tethered directly to sales. So, the question has changed just a tiny little bit in 2010. Now, with more educated clients, that question has become, “What is the value dollar of a like?” Wanna take a guess? I’ll give you a couple of minutes to do some back-of-the-envelope math. In the mean time, know that Syncapse has a number, as does Nielsen. The question is, do you believe them? Personally, it feels a little too close to foreclosure crisis thinking. No hard numbers. No hard facts. Go ahead. Sign on the dotted line and have your client hold you to that KPI. No thanks.

Such a state of affairs makes me keenly interested in anyone who is applying a little science to the craft of social media planning such as when Noah Brier posted “The Math of Viral.” That’s why I was also happy to read about Organic’s very own Jason Harper, who has started using social media as a way to foresee turns in the road ahead, to predict and thus optimize campaigns.

“To gauge the predictive powers of tweets and Facebook sign-ups, Harper borrowed the concepts of velocity and acceleration from the world of physics. To come up with those numbers, Harper had to collect data during three phases of a campaign: the baseline, or the number of Tweets or Facebook fans before an ad campaign starts; The Hot Zone, or the main surge of activity during the campaign, and the Fallout, the inevitable decline when the campaign is finished.”

Okay, so that’s the simple version of some serious calculus and the only thing you need to know is that this model, which Harper calls Velocity and Acceleration, can predict whether a mass-marketing campaign will reach its overall goals within the first few days it begins running. That’s a nice tool to have, no?

I’m wondering what kind of mathematics, if any, you’re using at all to predict, value, evaluate or optimize social media campaigns that play across one or many platforms. Because really, social media has advanced far beyond this two-way dialogue crap I hear people are still peddling, you dig?

If you’ve got something to say about this topic, guest posts are welcome: superspyin at gmail com

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