Naturally, Paul Woolmington has something else to say. The peripatetic partner of New York's Naked Communications has just spent almost an hour being interviewed in advance of the agency's designation as 2007 Media Boutique of the Year, and now he wants to change the name of the award his shop is about to win.

At a time when most big marketers are trying to figure out how to let go of old school media strategies, one of the biggest, global packaged-goods giant Unilever, released all 10 digits at once. It took the plunge with the kind of freefall abandon that surprised many of its peers but is generating the kind of results that are encouraging others to follow suit. The speed, creativity and passion with which Unilever has embraced the shift from passive, one-way push media to digital, interactive and branded content that puts the consumer at the center, defies the long-held industry adage …

Like a handful of other media savvy brand agencies, the team at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners are usually on Media's short list for selection as Media Department of the Year. We picked them for 2007, in large part, because they abolished their media department during the past year. Well, they didn't actually get rid of it. They merged it with their account planning group to create a seamless "strategy department" that could well be the new model for the media department of the future. At a time when many voices in the industry are calling for greater integration between media, …

Starcom USA CEO John Muszynski isn't satisfied with winning media magazine's agency of the year award four times in a row. "I want 10," he says. He's halfway there, but this year, his agency will have to share the stage with a familiar name - sibling shop MediaVest. The Starcom MediaVest Group sisters tie for this year's honor for the same reasons - they are thought leaders for their industry and benchmarks for their competitors. But in what has become arguably the most highly functional corporate family in the media agency business, they took distinctly different paths to the top.

Last year, I began this letter with the foreboding, "I can almost hear the kvetching now: 'Mediamagazine is in Starcom's vest pocket.'" This year, I can tell you I'm already pulling a few hatchets out of my back.