Throughout my professional life, I've had the privilege of riding hundreds of steep learning curves, getting thrown into the deep end in a huge variety of industries, disciplines, and markets. My relish of these moments is perhaps unusual; after all, not everyone likes being completely ignorant when tasked with something new. As such, I thought it might be useful to share what I've learned this past year in one particular area: television advertising and, particularly, media buying.

As our industry becomes increasingly disrupted by digital technology and fundamental changes in consumer behavior, our lives get harder and much more complex. Whose job today is simpler than it was five years ago? Not mine; not yours either, I suspect. Unfortunately, all too often the strategies we choose to simplify our jobs and lives only make them more complicated. How many times have we seen folks trying to solve fundamental market problems by chasing what everyone else says is hot at the moment?

The last month has been amazing in terms of showing the influence of social media. Three events unfurled to tell a story of the scope of social media and the virtual hype machine that it feeds, and you are insane if you're not paying attention. If you're a brand marketer, there are some interesting concepts to take away as well.

Every company promotes innovation and progress within its marketing organization. Yet, culturally and structurally many organizations have hurdles in place that stifle the very process that yields innovative and effective new ideas. So what’s holding your team back? The answer is simple: fear. Fear of Failure: If the corporate culture doesn’t support a little risk, exploration, trial and error, and failure, then it doesn’t support innovation and progress. If you’re stepping outside your comfort zone and developing creative approaches to reaching, influencing and engaging consumers, then you’re bound to have some flops. But these failures are necessary to hit the …

There is a war taking place in advertising, one that will determine what the industry will look like for years to come. This battle is being waged on multiple fronts, but the outcome will be based on one question: What technology will marketers use to create, target, deliver and measure their ads? The winning software will make its makers rich and powerful. The losers will fade into history. Everyone else in advertising will be inexorably linked to the technology that wins, perhaps for generations.

Tonight, I am a virgin. I'm in attendance at Kiwi Foo: the New Zealand iteration of the seminal un-conference whose agenda is created entirely by its attendees and whose value, therefore, lies in the caliber of its guest list. As you can imagine, I felt pretty honored to get an invitation -- and tonight, as festivities kicked off, I also felt the way about-to-be-deflowered people have felt from time immemorial, wondering: "How exactly are we expected to behave here?"

Over the last few weeks I've been thinking a lot about sports marketing, and this past weekend I was reminded of why: the emotions tied to sports are palpable and real, and they are the kind of emotions that brands can only dream of being associated with.

Every company should have a digital champion to facilitate and motivate the progressive cultural shift towards embracing cross-functional collaboration and iteration. Sometimes this digital muse is an internal team member, and sometimes an external partner. But without that spark, all pistons won't be firing. Marketing leaders must adopt a formal plan to organize for digital excellence, develop written processes, rally the troops, and enforce productive workflow.

Netscape founder Marc Andreessen says that software is eating the world -- and he's right. All of the necessary ingredients for this revolution are now in place: Programming languages like Ruby make creating software easier and faster than ever before, cloud-based hosting allows software to be served at a global scale, and over two billion people now have broadband Internet access. As a result, every industry is in the process of being revolutionized by software, including advertising.

Google+, you are really starting to piss me off. Yes, you're "gaining momentum." You've got "90 million members." But there's one problem. You're "a sham."