It's incredible just how much a significant life change can affect your media consumption habits. Just this past week my wife and I gave birth to our first baby, a precious little boy (and he's adorable, just in case you were curious). I have to say that this wonderful event, along with the fact that I'm getting older, officially puts me in an entirely new demographic! Last year I left for good the hallowed halls of the coveted 18-34-year-old male segment and entered that more refined, well-structured and infinitely more complex 35-54-year-old demo, but now I've also become part of …

Not familiar with BRM? Perhaps you are more familiar with its cousin CRM, or Customer Relationship Management. As technology has improved CRM tools and functionality, it has changed the way marketers connect to people by helping to organize and filter information about buying habits to better serve customers going forward. But with people connecting more and more to brands on social networks, the next wave of marketing may be providing people the information they need/want through social media, making it a "Brand Relationship Management" (BRM) tool.

During the most spirited of times, we encourage each other to think big, go big or go home. And to a certain extent, even when spirits are dampened, we still keep a lookout for something big>/i>: for a groundbreaking answer, idea, invention, application or trend taking hold. Yet it's refreshing to look in from the horizon and consider the most immediate aspects of your business reality: vision, team, course, proof of progress, core business, definitions and approach. The evaluation does not have to be surgical to make a difference. Small, purposeful measures can be huge. Think about these....

Search advertising comprises roughly half of online advertising, and Google is the world's most profitable and revolutionary media company. Sure, we all know that. But what's not blatantly acknowledged is how search-engine marketing DNA is expanding to new channels, heavily influencing the evolution of the entire media landscape.

Yesterday, as anticipated, Amazon's Jeff Bezos announced the debut of the large-screen Kindle, the Kindle DX. The print media industry has been watching this one closely because, unlike earlier versions of the Kindle which work best with small format books, the new larger screen Kindle DX has a very large reading surface and is positioned as a digital device suitable to read textbooks, newspapers and memoranda on. Wow! Finally, we have a savior for the newspaper, magazine and educational book publishing industries that are saddled with massive legacy cost structures built around "ink on dead tree" production and distribution? Or …

In a recent issue of Wired, J.J. Abrams wrote an editorial on how the proliferation of online spoilers has affected our ability to enjoy media. It got me thinking of an old concept, one that is ever more applicable now that we all engage in such hectic, cluttered lives: that one must learn to enjoy the journey, not just the arrival at a destination.

The first ads run on television were of a silky-voiced announcer reading ad copy from a script, standing behind a microphone. Why? Because that's the way they did advertising on radio before television came along. Eventually someone realized, "Hey wait, we can use sight and motion to sell the product." Well, we are now in an era where we have moved to a medium beyond television, and advertisers (for the most part) are still running creative that is effectively the equivalent of a silky-voiced spokesman reading a script standing behind a microphone. But don't worry, moving from a broadcast to …

It was a week that felt like a dog pile of not-so-Hallmark moments: the media contortions around Obama's 100 Days; the real stats on the economy; our inflated consciousness of the swine flu. I needed some levity, so I enjoyed my moment of timely spiritual alignment with Jon Stewart. On one "Daily Show" late in the week, Stewart reflected on the weekend prior, when he'd "cut himself some new jeans shorts" and gone running in the sunshine with a feeling of hopeful turnaround -- only to be duped by the torrential week to come. I've decided to keep on my …

I believe in advertising, but I dislike most television commercials. That's why I bought a TiVo several years ago -- so I could watch exactly the content I wanted, when I wanted, and avoid the rest. Not surprisingly, with a critical mass of the population using DVRs, TiVo has begun to extract some fascinating insights about network programming and commercial viewing.