I remember back in the day when a small phone was important. I think it was around the Nokia 3310 or some similar model. You could bounce it like a basketball and it would keep on working. I even had a really cool model that was all chrome and slid open. The buttons were small and texting was a massive pain in the fingers, but the calls were great and the phone was solid. Life was simpler back then. Nowadays the line is blurring between phones and tablets. I've heard the term "phablet" used, and I don't like it. If …

Several articles on introversion recently found me - serendipity, I suppose. I subscribe to the theory that introversion and extroversion are not binary personality attributes, but a continuum. I lean toward the introverted side, I've been told. Stemming from my own bias and pride, Carl King's "10 Myths About Introverts" really resonates with me. His myths underscore why introverted people are among the most interesting, creative and effective people. Trust me, I know! As a marketer, I must underscore that the unique characteristics of introverts make them especially suited for marketing, where focus, clarity, introspection, trust, authenticity, creativity and meaningful …

Millennials, those born after 1980, expect to change jobs at least every three years. That means that every few years - unless you've been fired - you will need to resign. This is especially true in media and advertising, where change is constant and new opportunities come along frequently. Since you may need to resign more than dozen times during your career, it's important to do it right. Here's how:

You don't need a new phone. I know Bill Hader is telling you that you do. Your fingers are all cut up from the cracked screen, your girlfriend has been sending you crisis messages for a week that your device is intentionally withholding from you, you've peed on it, whatever. The message is clear: Life with a cell phone more than six months old is hell, and you might as well end it all.

I'm sure you're all familiar with the phrase, "What's in a name?" Actually, quite a bit. Just ask Google. Or Yahoo. Apparently, there's a lot of merit in branding gobbledygook, inserting r@nd0m punctuation and/or gratuitous use of "oo." By the same token, there's also a lot to be said about a name's (brand) logo. To illustrate this, why not use the same original search engine giants?

This Big-Data era of marketing has created the concept of addressability, which makes data-driven marketing a reality. The Internet has been the most effective addressable medium to date, but it won't stop there. Addressability is the end goal for all media because of two key factors: performance and money.

Amid growing awareness among consumers about how their personal data is tracked and used by businesses to sell them more stuff, we are entering fertile ground to introduce innovations that help individuals manage their own data to improve their lives. Consumers' experience with their own data should go far beyond preventing companies from using that data for financial gain.

Last week, on a Facebook Page I manage, I posted a link about a woman talking down a gunman to save a schoolful of elementary kids. It got two likes.. A colleague posted a link about the kiwibird being a direct descendant of the T-Rex. It got 24 likes. I posted the above observation on my personal profile. Nobody was surprised, although some did try to justify it.

The announced merger between Omnicom and Publicis has sparked a very constructive debate in our industry about how major players in the ad industry must significantly improve their ability to leverage data in this digital, global, Internet-driven age. To be clear, I don't think that big data is really going to play a significant role in the merger. You don't need to be big to leverage big data; quite the opposite. The notion of big data is really about the newfound availability, to companies of all sizes, of massive volumes of highly valuable, unstructured data being thrown off from all …

There's a meme right now: what makes New York and/or the Bay Area either great or miserable for the media business. Lots of people are writing about it and even the Monday Spin by Matt Straz took a stab at it (nice article, Matt!), so who am I to not take a pass at touting the wonderfulness that is San Francisco and the Bay Area? Here are 10 things that make the Bay Area great(er) than everywhere else for the media and interactive industries: