When I hear someone say, "we want to target men for our marketing campaign" or "we want men's publications for our PR campaign," that raises an immediate red flag to me as a marketer and an analyst. "Men" is a giant category, approximately 3.5 billion people, and the chances that your product, service, or announcement is going to resonate with all of them is exceptionally small. Campaigns that aim for "men" often fall far short of the target, at best wasting marketing dollars on people who don't care about what you have to offer, and at worst offending portions of …

How profound are the differences between the sexes when it comes to product discovery, advertising consumption and in-store decision-making? We developed a series of Omnibus research surveys to discover any potential gender "gaps."

When Kevin Durant accepted his MVP trophy, he said very little about himself. Instead, he singled out every one of his current Oklahoma City Thunder teammates and told them how much he appreciated them, how much he learned from them, and how much his success hinged on their contributions. He told Russell Westbrook, "I love you, man, I love you." Then, he looked at his mother and summarized his humble beginning, the circumstances of his upbringing, and told her that she was "the real MVP."

You could have the greatest creative, a grand retargeting strategy and a brilliant pricing strategy, but the best way to get men to make an online gift purchase for Mother's Day may well be to convince them that others like them are already your customers.

The name of this newsletter is Engage:Men, and that's what we've been talking about in our earlier columns such as: Making the Men In Your (Marketing) Life A Priority This Year and What The Data Says About the State of the American Man.

Let's give men some credit - they actually do care about the brands they use - and they are doing the buying.

Check out any Fantasy Football message board, blacktop pickup basketball court, or "Call of Duty" battlefield, and you'll see the flourishing of an often-misunderstood emotional play: trash-talking. In these worlds, talking trash is an accepted - and acceptable - part of the game. Competitors poke and prod and insult each other in order to provoke a negative reaction and gain an advantage.

In early February, Anheuser-Busch InBev, America's largest brewer, signed a deal to buy the Blue Point Brewing Company, a well-respected Long Island craft beer company. With Anheuser-Busch InBev's success, and its strong portfolio of beer brands that include Budweiser, Stella Artois, Beck's, and Corona, why would the company feel impelled to buy a craft beer company?

January is almost gone. But if you're still fine-tuning your marketing plans to this demographic for 2014, I thought now would be a good time to share some ideas that you may want to keep in mind.

As lines snaked outside marijuana dispensaries in Colorado on day one of legal weed, the themes of the day were obvious and cliche'd: stoners, bongs, the munchies.