You may have heard about the study that shows that morale at agencies is at an all-time low. Where morale is low, the chances of having mediocre talent working on clients' business is high, since there will be a real challenge to attract and retain top talent, with all the consequences you can imagine (or have experienced). It sounds as bad as it is.

Anyone with even a passing interest in health and nutrition can be forgiven for thinking the mainstream media just doesn't know what it's talking about. A consumer researching various popular diets, for example -- whether Paleo, South Beach, or even the widely discredited Atkins -- will find whatever she wants to find, pro or con. You want a reason to drop that South Beach diet and join Weight Watchers? You'll find it. You want a reason to drop Weight Watchers and take up the South Beach diet? You'll find that too.

I did it. I installed an ad blocker. I'm sorry. If you knew my pain, you might forgive me. Here's what happened.

If you take on a new role, either in your current company or a new one, I'd urge you to think twice before taking on the mantle of "Strategy" or "Brand Transformation" in your title, because it tends to put a target on your back. Unless you're part of a team designated to work on strategic initiatives, and unless that team is truly cross-functional, you're destined to fail.

The first time I went to Washington D.C., I was struck by the extreme polarity I saw there. That day, the Tea Party was staging a demonstration against Obamacare on the Mall in front of the Capitol building. But this wasn't the only event happening. The Mall was jammed with gatherings of all types, from all political angles: the right, the ultra-right and left, the rich and poor, the eager and entitled, the sage and stupid. The discourse was loud, passionate and boisterous. It was -- in a word -- chaos.

Last week, I wrote about the relative lack of attention to the creative output of agencies, who are paying too much attention to tech, data and digital in general, while all the time keeping a watchful eye on the bottom line. Marketers are equally at fault, as they, too, spend too much time worrying about digital, and creating what P&G's Chief Brand Officer Mark Pritchard called "crap" and "noise," speaking at the annual Association of National Advertisers meeting. Well, if you want to avoid "crap" and "noise," start by delivering an awesome brief. Here are a few pointers to get …

Yahoo: Time of death, oh about a week ago," said the headline in the IT Professionals newsletter I just got. The reason? The hacking that compromised up to a billion accounts. The secret backdoor access so the company could scan every email coming through the system, looking for certain keywords flagged by the Feds. The general "aimless wandering" of the company. These reasons certainly seem legitimate, and create a tempting opportunity for those who care about Internet security and privacy to get up on our high horses and sneer derisively about how far one of the original titans of the …

Headlines about TV viewership have not been particularly positive. Common themes lately have been: "TV ratings plummeting," "NFL viewership in decline,""Millennials unplug from TV," or "Cord-cutting, cord-shaving growing." Then there's a big favorite lately: "TV can't deliver reach like it used to." While there's some truth in all of these ideas, they don't tell the whole story of TV viewership today.

Advertising and marketing; these two words get thrown around quite often and many people think they're synonymous at first glance, but in reality they are very different. I used to think advertising could be considered a subset of marketing, but I don't even think that's true anymore. They are different languages, different tools and different types of knowledge with very complementary outcomes. The differences are demonstrated in the ways we think about ad tech and martech.

Since Siri first stepped into our lives in 2011, we're being introduced to more and more digital assistants. We've met Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana and Google's Google Now. We know them, but do we love them?