Ron Johnson's 17-month tenure as JC Penney's CEO was disappointing. I'm sure there are numerous important details that contributed to the failure that no onlooker or journalist is privy to. Nobody will know the complete story for some time. Regardless, this case of a successful former Apple exec applying the Apple playbook to another company underscored one thing: One successful wild run does not make a trend.

The New York Times obituary section is the city's toughest club to get into. First, you have to die. Second, of the 150,000 people each day who are eligible, the Times selects only one or two people to get in. Given these long odds, who from our industry might eventually make it past the Times' grey velvet rope and be immortalized? Some likely candidates include:

When 500 Startups founder Dave McClure visited us a few months ago, he was sporting a t-shirt that said, "GET OUT OF THE BUILDING," in big, Frankie-Goes-To-Hollywood letters. A reference to Steve Blank's core philosophy, the phrase exhorts developers and entrepreneurs to get product in the hands of customers as early and as often as possible, leaving the navel-gazing environment of the cube and interacting with real live people to see if they actually want what you've got.

This week, JC Penney -- or jcp, as they are now affectionately known -- ousted CEO Ron Johnson after just 17 months on the job. Yes, THE Ron Johnson. No, not Ron Jeremy. Ron Johnson - The Dude! The guy they hired from Apple; the guy responsible for Apple retail stores and the Genius Bar.

Having previously spent almost 18 years on the agency side of the business, with many of those years spent handling consumer advertising for a number of the biggest brands in the world, I think I am qualified to say this: It's a bad idea to split your business between multiple agencies.

In the white-collar office world, I've always believed clean and organized working habits are a prerequisite to consistently producing quality work. All my colleagues know that my belief extends to workplace kitchens. They tend to be metaphors for work quality and mutual employee respect.

Last week Rutgers University fired its men's basketball coach for his abusive behavior toward his players. His acts, caught on video, included a range of behavior typical of a schoolyard bully: name-calling, pushing and kicking his players. The coach, who was supposed to be the leader of his team, was allowed to inflict his abuse for too long. As a result, the Rutgers athletic director and another official were also fired.

In last week's column, I discussed what I called the disturbing dogma of social media. The idea provoked some strong responses (thank you! I'm always grateful for feedback). Traci Browne pointed out that I had used a narrow definition of social media, while others got into a reasonably heated discussion of its pros and cons. The argument might have seemed like an ordinary blog post comment thread, but to me there was a meta-layer to it, one about the nature of discussion and the nature of attachment.

A few weeks back I was visiting New York and had the opportunity to go to a Brooklyn Nets game. Having grown up a Knicks fan in Albany, and now a Warriors fan based in California the last 15 years, I was intrigued to see what Brooklyn's basketball team was like. I have to say I was extremely impressed. And as an ad guy, I found a trip to the Barclays Center a master class in branding!

In this decades-old age of voicemail, it's always been important for callers to leave quality voice messages so human recipients can understand with minimal effort. Now that many people rely on digital voicemail and transcription services, it's more important than ever to leave quality messages -- that machines can understand. A machine will do its best to decipher your nuances and poor voice quality, but it will not do so as accurately as a human.