Under Armour has received accolades for its marketing, including its campaign "I Will What I Want." To be sure, it's a great campaign, but at the end of the day, it's no better or worse than anything Nike, Reebok or Adidas have done with their aspirational advertising. Personally, I'm overjoyed that Under Armour is being recognized. In fact, I think the company deserves even more credit than it's been given, due to five key reasons.

I am a great believer in learning by doing. While I place much value on book education, I believe hands-on experience is critically important to gain true understanding of a subject. I was reminded of this when I read last week's MediaPost column by George Simpson, which made me think about why I chose the technical devices I use.

I consider myself a positive, upbeat kind of gal. I co-founded an organization called Ministry of Awesome, for Pete's sake. And yet, I find myself easily repelled by holiday-affiliated marketing campaigns. They seem to be even more manipulative than usual, even more reinforcing of the message that if you haven't bought enough, consumed enough, spent enough, you're doing it wrong.

Now that we're past Thanksgiving and holiday parties are already upon us, it's time to think about 2015. While I don't mind making predictions -- it's fun, and I'm always trying to understand what might be coming next -- I thought I would be a bit contrarian today and write about what won't happen next year.

The next five to 10 years are a transition period for television, and what lies at the end of this transition is pretty amazing for advertisers. Consider this period the "middleware" stage for TV.

There was a lot of debate about stats over the holiday shopping weekend. Were in-store sales up on Black Friday? Did Cyber Monday sales cannibalize retail sales? I have one question in response: Who cares? Overall, holiday sales will be up this year. The rest of the analysis you'll read this week is at best prognostication and at worst fear-mongering. Here's a question that's actually interesting: What does all this confusion teach us about how the best holiday retailers are now strategizing for holiday sales?

Over the last few weeks I have had to deal with a wide variety of service providers, as I'm moving to another state. The following may not come as a total surprise to you, but times are still dismal in most of Customer Service Land. I've counted a staggering number of misaligned, misdirected and disconnected (literally) phone calls and other electronic interactions.

For a very long time, marketers developed strategies to achieve marketing objectives like awareness, perception and efficiency. The pendulum shifted recently, with marketers now starting to take a more significant seat at the C-level table, realizing that marketing metrics are not necessarily as important as standard business metrics -- though marketing measures do provide a bridge to meet standard ones. And now the ultimate accountability for marketing is revenue and sales. Today's marketers understand addressability and accountability, and if they don't then they're destined to be replaced.

Well, hello, brand marketers out there. It's time to shut the door in the face of the Grinch who stole your media budget. It's time to celebrate that you made it to the end of the year (albeit with a few bumps and bruises). Be thankful you survived the umpteenth reorg and restructuring, budget cut, CMO and/or agency firing/hiring.

In case you missed it, last Friday was World Television Day. And it was not brought to you by Toyota or McDonald's, NBC or even NPR. No, this was a United Nations-led initiative backed by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the Association of Commercial Television (ACT) and egta, the Brussels-based association of television and radio sales houses. Regular readers of this column know that I am frequently critical of the role TV today plays as an advertising medium. But why not celebrate TV once a year? Let's face it, TV is and probably continues to be an incredibly powerful medium, …