There's still a year to go before the next U.S. president will be elected and never have the men and women who hope to relocate to Pennsylvania Avenue asked so much of you. You may have been Twittered by Barack Obama, or invited to create a campaign video for Mitt Romney. Perhaps you've gotten text messages from candidates on your cell phone or received campaign updates on your Facebook page.

There I am, just hours after landing on St. Thomas for a few days of vacation, enjoying dinner and drinks with a group of friends at the Toad and Tart, a local pub. As the last of our group arrives, a friend pulls out his newly purchased iPhone and begins to rave. A few moments later a second person pulls an iPhone from her pocket and joins in the praise. The group hovers over the devices as the proud owners share their favorite features.

Digitalization has allowed broadcasters to deliver more channels. It's allowed cable system operators to expand the number of linear channels while adding on-demand programming. And it has given birth to an Internet so vital and pervasive that it's setting the bar high for all other media to meet. No matter who you are or who your customer is, the digitization of media has something for you.

Fall brings great sports rivalries like the World Series and college football. But one rivalry as compelling as any Red Sox/Yankee pennant race or Michigan/Ohio State game is being waged in consumer electronic stores across the country every day: Blu-ray vs. HD DVD.

At one time, you could make a distinction between Suits and Creatives, but the line that divides those worlds is quickly vanishing. Instead, the fields of account and media planning are merging with creativity and moving into a new, more strategic and smarter direction.

I'm a baseball nut. I love the game, and can find a baseball metaphor to explain just about anything. But ever since Michael Lewis's 2003 book Moneyball revealed how Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane was using statistical analysis to transform the management of the sport, baseball has become a particularly apt basis for comparison to marketing.

The conversation that is today's media will challenge everything we know about marketing. Among the most significant changes in store is this: Everybody gets punk'd.

Sporting the potentially ambiguous job title of director of consumer insights, I'm fascinated whenever I see anyone else in the industry with insights in their title. I always ask them what it means for them. After all, someone can't walk into my office and just ask me: "I'd like two insights, please!"

In the pressure to be (or at least appear) current in today's onslaught of new-media opportunities, many in our profession are finding themselves making or receiving channel dictates like this - which is fine, as long as one critical criterion has been met beforehand: the core idea has been cracked.

In early August Susan Nathan departed Universal McCann, becoming the 14th senior research executive to exit from a top tier media agency in the last four years. The string of departures also raised the question of whether such agencies were devaluing hard analysis.