It's a foolproof marketing technique - turning customers into slavish, unthinking, devoted followers of products. In other words, zombies. It's a strategy that can create legions of pod people dedicated to a particular brand, leaving all rivals in the dust. The best customer a brand could have is an actual cult follower.

Has Madison Road finally reached a dead end? The much ballyhooed entertainment marketing independent that was born in the branded content boom year of 2004, when everybody and their mother was hanging a branded-entertainment shingle, is lately rumored to have gone the way of fabled dot-com dodo birds like boo.com.

Director Ridley Scott, whose 1982 film Blade Runner has no fewer than three versions, is going back to the future - but not in a big-budget Hollywood remake. Scott recently teamed with London-based creative/marketing agency Ag8 to create "Purefold," a Blade Runner-inspired Web series set to premiere later this year. And true to its futuristic roots, the "first open media franchise," as it's being called by its creators, represents a new frontier in branded viral content: Plot synopses will be established by participating brands and disseminated online, where social networking aggregator FriendFeed.com will cull user conversations, suggestions, and ideas to …

From a historical perspective, we all know that this year will be a landmark one for business.What we don't know is just how transformative it will be for business, communications and marketing. This month, Jeffrey Dachis joins the forum. As cofounder of Razorfish, his expansive thinking helped shape the first build of the digital communications landscape.

In mid-May, when Twitter decided to get rid of a feature from its service, it became the latest brand to discover what it's like to be in the eye of a social media firestorm. The change to "Replies" on Twitter - in which users reply, mostly in messages all of their followers can see, to one another - involved no longer showing users "Replies" between one person they were following, and one person they weren't. If it sounds esoteric, it is. But that didn't stop tens of thousands of Twitter users from complaining.

This summer i plan on learning how to golf. This makes sense for a few reasons: One, I work on a golf account and the practical experience will be good for me; two, it seems like a fun way to spend a day outdoors. Maybe I can even use this new skill to network and meet colleagues.

I have a confession to make. Journalists are smug and self-righteous. We think that what we do for a living is important, and makes a difference. That the world could not possibly function properly without us. That consumers will be duped. That bad guys will get away. That democracies will crumble. We're about to find out.

The consumer discord hasn't risen to the level of New Coke, but Dave Howe, president of the Sci Fi Channel, has spent months trying to ease the consternation regarding his network's rebrand, which will take effect July 7.

Unless you live on a sweet potato farm in Lancaster, Pa., brands are a big part of your life. You wake up in your combed-cotton Ralph Lauren sheets to your iPod playing though your Bose sound system. You brush your teeth with Colgate Total Clean Mint Paste before stepping into a hot shower and scrubbing your scalp with Burt's Bees shampoo bar. After drying off with Jonathan Adler, you brew a trusty cup of Starbucks Breakfast Blend (or maybe you prefer Stumptown, Gorilla, Lavazza or any of the countless other specialty roasters) and pour a glass of Tropicana Pure Premium …

Once again in extreme risk-averse mode, Hollywood is more enamored than ever with repurposed intellectual property - sequels, prequels and remakes - searching for creative concepts that have already been commercially tested in the marketplace.