I was reminded today of the silliness that sometimes is our business. It all had to do with a client I serviced many moons ago – a national trade association for manufacturers of compressed air and gas equipment.

Data is a wonderful thing. Which is why our industry is so obsessed with all things data related. And the bigger the data, the better.  Because whatever little data can do for you, bigger data can do in a bigger way.

For the most part, I grew up admiring news guys like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite... and entertainment interviewers like  Steve Allen and Johnny Carson.  Even now, I prefer the skillful hands of guys like Charlie Rose and David Letterman.

Last night I had the most amazing JCP moment ever.  First, over dinner, my wife tells me that she and her friend happened to wander through the JCPenney at Great Northern and "the new renovation they started a year or so ago really looks great now.

More than 25 years ago, I had the unique experience to work on the launch of the industry's very first "at-home soda dispenser." Mr. SoftDrink from Norcarl Products was the thing of dreams... a sleek machine that mixed and dispensed cola before your very eyes.  No more bottles, no more cans, no more waste.

Anyone with an agenda can source one study or another that appears to support their claims about the shifting marketing impact of one or another strategy – advertising, social media, direct  mail, mobile. But the truth is media news coverage resulting from publicity is still the single most impactful (and efficient) strategy for creating awareness, generating interest, building coalition, driving traffic and more.

Like many people, I was a HUGE fan of the TV show LOST. For me, it was all about the journey and struggles of these very engaging characters.  But really, I rarely if ever truly understood what was going on.  Every road had a fork in it, every question ended with a new question, every revelation resulted in a new mystery.

Seriously?  It's not bad enough that way too Americans – including children – are sick, incapacitated and dead as a direct result of obesity, but now we have to insult them with a study to determine if being obese might be healthy for some diabetics.

"What's your agency billing rate?" is one of the most common and despised questions in the agency business. It seems innocent enough; even innocuous in some cases, but it is never either. Of course, the presumption always is that you are comparing apples to apples, as if you were getting prices from two different car dealers for the same vehicle.