"Bring media upstream in the communication process!" "Give media a seat at the table!" Then there's my favorite: "Media practitioners are people, too!" Okay, so I made up that last one.

I tend to shy away from alarmism. And frankly, predictions of doom seem downright rude so early in the year. But the more I think about it, the more I realize there is a shift happening in our industry which could effectively make the idea of paid advertising redundant. Specifically, if companies allocate their creative resources to inventing really useful products and creating interesting brand experiences, the social media word of mouth will take care of the selling.

This is a big year for me. I turn 50. At one time, that would have seemed really old to me. Now it just seems older. Like many of my generation, I'm constantly redefining what age means to me. And because my generation is so big and culturally influential, we're also constantly redefining the way the world of media thinks about age.

Sometimes trends might seem to come out of nowhere, but they don't

Women are on the verge, so to speak. Females between the age of 45 and 64 are the largest demographic in the United States. That's right: There are more middle-age women in this country than anyone else. Nearly 40 million, in fact. And if you think that all they do is shuttle their kids and grandkids around in silver SUVs all day, you would be mistaken (although they do this as well).

Apparently scotch and martinis are the right fuel for the advertising fire. The AMC show Mad Men is mostly known for its hard-driving, hard-drinking, chain-smoking characters. But these guys (and they are almost all guys) shaped, and nearly invented, modern marketing. In the episode titled "The Wheel" (season one), account exec Pete Campbell's father-in-law has just bought Clearasil. Sitting across from Pete in his living room he throws off, "Do you know there's a surge in adolescence right now?"

Television gives the boomers a unique pop-cultural glue. The generation that started with the postwar population explosion has always fancied itself something of a dandy.

Hippies became Yippies and Yuppies. They fought their parents. Then they became parents. Maybe the last time you thought about it like this was when the careerist character played by Diane Keaton struggled to diaper her distant relative's abandoned bundle of joy in Baby Boom. So here's the thing: These kids are Boomers, too. The echo describes a reverb - the Doppler effect of the first population spike.