Inspired by a friend in the blogosphere, I recently visited the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in Manhattan. Currently on exhibit is "Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006," with three floors of innovative design from around the world. I consider myself to be fairly up on art and what's happening in the creative world, but "Design Life Now" completely blew me away.

Much has been written about the growth of the U.S. Hispanic market as a consumer segment having high marketing value. But a close look at Hispanic demographics shows that advertisers may be missing the mark if they view Hispanics as a monolithic market or consider country of origin to be the best predictor of consumer behavior within that market.

Always picture the person you're writing the ad for before you write the ad. I'm not sure whether this came from a textbook, an advertising professor, or my first creative director, but it's something I always do before starting a new campaign. Now, I put hundreds of different people in my head before starting. That's not daunting, it's liberating.

We've heard it before: "Let's put together a focus group" or "What do the numbers tell us?" In these cases, our colleagues are often looking for primary research to tell them unequivocally what to do.

Any "bubble" has at its core a sense of obsession, kept alive by a sense of abstraction. The obsession tends to be an awareness of "something big"going on combined with a fear of missing it.

It's as good a time as any to return to the origins of advertising. Media takes a look at the definition of advertising as advanced in the book: The Economic Effects of Advertising by Harvard professor Neil H. Borden.

For any discipline, including advertising, there is a science and a philosophy. When people strive to understand quantifiable, repeatable processes, they are focusing on the science of a discipline. When they create theories to tackle questions unanswerable by the science of a discipline, they are working with that discipline's philosophy.

They say that 2007 is the year for mobile marketing. I think they said the same thing about 2006 and some of them probably said it in 2005. But the idea of marketing to the more than 201.7 million U.S. consumers carrying mobile devices (Source: 2005 eMarketer) is so promising that marketers, agencies, media properties, and carriers are all ready to do it.

I've been pondering the endless possibilities of how digital technology and, more specifically, the Internet, have changed entertainment. Of course, I'm full of my own biases on the subject and it would be very easy for me to jump to conclusions. But being a planner, I thought I'd do a little research rather than rely on anecdote and subjective experience.

Is branded entertainment going through a mid-life crisis? Judging by some of the sound bites at last month's Madison + Vine conference staged by Advertising Age in Beverly Hills, it appears that some of the leading proselytizers of the be revolution have traded in their rose-colored glasses for a few sessions on the analyst's couch.