As a digital marketer, advertising and media person and consumer, one of the coolest elements about the online world, to me, is instant messaging (IM). While working in the agency world, IMing at work was a problem.

Whenever I attend AD:TECH conferences, I usually file a follow-up column that features a smaller player or company that I became aware of only at that week's show. AD:TECH has always been great for that story, from my vantage point. It's arguably our industry's conference with the most general theme and largest base, and therefore, it is accessible to a larger number of business types than other shows.

Last week I got a rise out of the readers, which is exactly what I was looking for. The topic of Building a Brand is one that always gets people to come out and offer up an opinion, so let's have at it again.

Two weeks ago in this space I talked about the potential gains against audiences such as myself, which are admittedly not the norm, advertisers might yield by putting their ads on their websites.

Most brand managers I've known over the years have kept a very close eye on the average age of their brand's typical consumer. For many brands, an aging brand is one that is taking steps toward the grave, and an inability to connect with younger consumers is an eventual death sentence.

I always question the impact and affect of our work in the industry. I am thrilled with the notion of communication via multiple devices and formats. I love that it is accessible anywhere and everywhere to anyone from kids to adults to my grandmother. We live in a land of laptops, kiosks, and set top boxes. As advertisers, brand marketers, researchers, tool providers, and technologists, we have a thirst for finding the next trend, big idea, or better solution.

Travelzoo Launches New Search Tool

I took some heat for my recent piece that wondered out loud when Pharmaceutical companies were going to take advantage of the power of Search on a larger, industry-wide basis. The comments on the Spin Board ranged from pharma professionals and those close to the pharma and medical equipment industries telling me I was all wet, to those in the interactive industry writing in that there was so much more for the industry to learn about how to leverage Search.

A traveler comes upon a fishing village. He has come at a time of year when no schools were running along the coastline (of fish, I mean ... schools of fish), so the industry of the village was silent. The traveler asks a local "What does everyone do when the fish aren't running." The local said, "We take this time to mend our nets and repair our boats. We work on casting and find new ways to make our catches."

Let's take another moment to discuss the ever-changing role of a Brand. Last week, I wrote about the world as it stands today and the concept of taking time and money to build a Brand, but I was disappointed to see there were only a few people interested enough in the topic to post a response. This means one of two things to me. Either no one is interested in building a brand anymore, or I was completely correct and there is no way to make a case against what I had to say. I know full well that the …