Tyler, the Creator. Rick Ross. Lil Wayne.

Brands like Mountain Dew and Reebok have turned on a dime on the recording artists they've struck deals with and dropped talent in light of a small group of critics making a lot of noise. I don't want to defend any of the content that was deemed offensive. But it's important to examine how that content got attached to a brand and subsequently made its way into the world.

In other words, marketers must take a step back and examine their own culpability in these crises.

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Baby-boomer marketers should be salivating over the 105 million-strong millennial market. Born between 1982 and 2004, millennials make up the first generation that actually outsizes the influential-but-aging boomers. So why are so many senior marketers missing the opportunity -- and their piece of $200 billion in spending power?

Why are they convinced the methods and media that have worked over the past 30 years of their careers will continue to produce results with tech-savvy millennials, even though they have vastly different media habits?

Among other things, baby-boomer marketers need to accept the fact that millennials have not inherited their parents' love for the "touch" of paper. They do not naturally go gaga over double-page spreads of either editorial or advertising in magazines. They do not feel compelled to seek their fashion and beauty direction from the magazines that served as bibles for older generations.

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There is a false assumption when talking about what goes viral. It's something like this: "Viral is what happens to great content."

It's a nice thought. Sometimes it's even true. But as much as we'd like to believe that well-scripted, beautifully produced and properly placed content always goes viral, again and again we see examples of how that's just not the case.

When we look at the most popular form of content on YouTube right now, we find something called "shopping-haul" videos. These are webcam videos of teenage girls and young women showing off clothes they just bought. Bad video, bad sound -- and still many of these pieces of content soar to tens of thousands of views.

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It was in San Francisco in the 1990s, and my boss took me to lunch to ask if I was interested in becoming CEO of the agency office there. I replied that I had never thought of myself as a CEO of an agency and needed a day to consider it.

Can you imagine?

Here I was, at the agency for a year and a half, and not once had it occurred to me that I was capable of running the place. So when the offer came, it came from left field. I have to believe that reaction stemmed from being a female executive in a sea of not so many; a man in my position would likely have been expecting the top job since day one and when it was offered, taken it as his due.

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Fueled partly by the rising Dow, and partly by pure entrepreneurialism, we're in a state of creation. Agencies are popping up from coast to coast, even in places like Chicago.

I'm pretty sure it's written in the Ad Executive Code of Conduct that after a decade or more, it is mandated that any and all founders of agencies author an article on what they may have learned. So now for some advice from a guy who started his career by failing typing tests at N.W. Ayer, J. Walter Thompson, Ogilvy & Mather and Grey.

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Today's business climate includes unprecedented corporate consolidation, global expansion and diversification of brand portfolios. Just as many agencies are integrating their services, the number of shops unbundling services is on the rise, too.

Additionally, with the increase in specialized discipline partners, agency relationships are becoming more transactional, driven by deliverables and less about the long-term relationship, making one wonder if the "agency-of-record" designation is a thing of the past. It's important to consider too the impact of holding-company alliances, as growing multinational clients actively seek a consolidated offering that allows them maximum control, flexibility and cost savings.

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The last year has brought with it a meaningful shift in gay rights. And from a marketing perspective, there has been an interesting parallel with more brands than ever coming out of the closet on this particular issue. We've seen a year filled with brands catering to -- or in other cases completely alienating -- the LGBT audience (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender for those of you scratching your heads). And the response has been as charged as the issue of gay rights itself.

I'm thankful to see the dialogue, but I do wonder what these potentially polarizing choices mean for the parent corporations? What do they mean for us as consumers? And how these choices actually come to fruition in real life?

Most of us read about the Chick-fil-A controversy last year when company President Dan Cathy made public comments opposing same-sex marriage, also bringing to light $5 million in company contributions to organizations that vehemently oppose LGBT rights. Within days there were terminated contracts, threats of boycott and pushback in new markets. Polls conducted at the height of the story stated that more than 50% of respondents would withhold patronage of the chain.

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The word cloud of marketing change bombards us with new tactical imperatives almost daily -- in targeting, engagement, commerce, community and mobile. Each of these silos is so complex it's spawned its own industry, and the complexity causes a lot of disjointed marketing efforts.

To plan a more complete response to the new world, marketing needs to reorganize around its unifying principle: utility.

Why?

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Some say we can't value social-marketing efforts directly. Others claim that if we can't attribute a return on investment, we shouldn't be doing it. But maybe we're all missing the point. Maybe the problem is not whether social value can be measured in dollars. Perhaps the issue is that we can't measure in dollars objectives that weren't intended to be profitable in the first place.

Most CEOs and CMOs have a clearly defined objective to make money for their organization. Yet most social-marketing programs are still designed to create engagement, gain followers or generate Facebook likes. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that there's a disconnect there. Getting to an ROI figure from most social efforts doesn't take better analysis tools -- it simply takes the inclusion of objectives that are centered on generating profit.

Customer loyalty, advocacy, engagement, interest and awareness are all important in the marketing funnel, but the assumption that they supersede the "baser" activity of selling is pure hubris. If customers don't also desire "buying" relationships with us, then we have no business being in business.

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Nielsen's May sweeps period begins in just a few weeks on April 25, kicking off a month when local news directors all over America will think about just one thing: how to juice the ratings that their sales teams will take to market until the next sweeps comes around.

Never mind that advertisers have long accepted artificially enhanced sweeps programming as the "norm" that sets their prices. They are consenting adults, after all, and I'm hardly the first to question the wisdom of this bizarre quarterly ritual. Being "No. 1" is still important for bragging rights and for the bottom line, of course, and even more important for the job security of general managers, news directors and anchors. But a once-generous pie that used to feed every station in the market is now crumbling around the edges, and smart station executives, even while cooking up special series and assorted stunts for May, are starting to experiment with a new recipe.

That's because they know that the next time any of their kids plan to watch their newscasts is ... never. I started my career at WNEW-TV in New York, which began the nightly newscast with the now-much-parodied catchphrase "It's 10 p.m.: Do you know where your children are?" Well, one place we needn't bother looking for them is in front of the set when the local news comes on. A Pew Research Center study released last fall reports that just 28% of the under-30 set watches local news regularly, down sharply from 42% in 2006.

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Japan has a global reputation as an originator of trends. While that's true in many cases, the global media tend to latch onto the most insane examples that defy any sort of logic. Let's do a quick rundown of some of the more outrageous things news outlets have been trying to pass off as trends in Japan:

Geeks dating their pillows in public

Geeks marrying their video game girlfriends

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We are just weeks away from a new internet era, when there will be a 6,000% expansion of website domains available for internet users. While this level of growth sounds exciting, it may hold more threat than promise for marketers.

Over the past year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has accepted applications from companies seeking brand-centric generic top-level domains, such as .netflix or .microsoft, as well as more broad-reaching gTLDs including .auto, .bank and .restaurant. An ICANN board meeting scheduled for April 7-11 in Beijing will likely cement the rollout of these new gTLDs on April 23.

The ANA has not only taken a strong position against ICANN's premature rollout of its gTLD plan, but also brought our industry's concerns to the highest levels of the U.S. government and to the ICANN organization. If you are a brand marketer and had not fully been following the discourse surrounding ICANN and the new gTLD plan, you are running out of time to assess, analyze and take action. Here are some helpful tips to act on now:

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Mozilla's announcement that the next version of Firefox, expected to go live in the near future, will include default third-party-cookie restrictions hit the ad industry like a thunderclap. Industry responses from across the board were cast in extreme terms, ranging from"nuclear" allusions to forecasting economic doom for the industry. Let me be clear, in spite of the rhetoric, Mozilla's decision will not break the Internet.

Third-party cookies have long been considered one of the most complicated pieces of the digital advertising puzzle. Consumers are increasingly aware of the privacy issues surrounding third-party cookies. Mozilla, meanwhile, has simply taken the matter into its own hands -- as Apple has done with Safari for the past decade -- by offering a market-based solution, the success of which will be determined by the consumer.

In its decision to block third-party cookies by default, Mozilla is differentiating between sites that have direct relationships with consumers and those that don't -- which is more likely to meet with users' expectations. Ultimately this is about fostering a healthy environment where consumers feel safe online. It's hard to dispute that without this baseline acknowledgement of consumers' expectations, our entire ecosystem will be compromised.

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Reading about the Ford Figo fiasco and the rolling of creative heads at JWT India creative heads, my only reaction was HOLI COW. You see, this week India is celebrating its festival of colors called Holi, but you can bet there are no celebrations in many agencies in this country right now.

I spoke with many of my industry peers in India to get their take on the debacle. Many slammed the credibility of those ads, saying that scam work is not respectable and shouldn't be going on at all. Others didn't think it was all that big a deal and believe the agency's reputation and that of the creatives who were dismissed will not be dinged for the long haul. As the old saying goes, some believe all PR is good PR, and we have seen evidence in both Bollywood and Hollywood that scandals can actually help to elevate personal brands to celebrity status.

But what struck me the most was the mass sentiment of shock and horror over the firings. In the creative community in India, most people view this as an overreaction and believe that those creatives did not deserve to lose their jobs.

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Finding out what makes the individual consumer tick is a wonderful thing, but pinpointing a common factor that makes an entire group of individuals tick is the difference between a happy customer and an energized team of brand ambassadors.

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As digital-data tracking and availability has evolved, marketing-mix modeling techniques and depth of insights have also evolved, allowing marketers knowledge of consumers they only once dreamed of.

Pixel and cookie tracking by ad servers (such as DoubleClick or Atlas) reveal a vast amount of details about online consumers. Pixel tracking provides information such as IP address (which reveals geographic locations of users), as well as time and date stamps. Cookies tell us what consumers clicked on, how much time they spent

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When advertising industry self-regulation was created in 1971, no one predicted that the system would last.

Self-regulation programs were viewed through a negative lens and perceived as cosmetic and transitory public-relations efforts, rather than real programs with real teeth.

Now, with more than four decades of experience, the self-regulatory system built by the advertising industry and administered by the Council of Better Business Bureaus is the gold standard against which other self-regulation is judged.

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Ask not what your country can do for (or to) you, but what you can do for it.

A government has a critical responsibility to protect its citizenry from threats outside our borders and from within. All too often corporations gone unchecked have hurt people in a quest for more profit, and our government could have done more. Think Pinto explosions, credit-default swap implosions and tobacco deaths -- all examples where our government could have intervened to prevent people from being hurt.

On the flip side is the "nanny-state" aspect of government, in which boundaries are crossed "in the public interest." Think Michael Bloomberg's soda ban, which is not only paternalistic, but just plain silly. You realize people can just buy two of the smaller size, right? Protection does not equal coddling.

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In January 2013, the Federal Trade Commission released its final ruling against POM Wonderful, unanimously upholding administrative law Judge D. Michael Chappell's May 2012 decision that POM lacked adequate substantiation for advertising claims that POM products could treat, prevent or reduce the risk of heart disease, prostate cancer and erectile dysfunction.

The FTC's latest ruling in the POM case clarifies its position on the substantiation requirements for disease and health claims for food and supplement products and could have a significant impact on brands looking to make such claims in the future.

The earlier decision by Judge Chappell had been met with significant excitement by food and supplement advertisers. While the judge found that POM had engaged in deceptive advertising, he also rejected the commission's arguments that POM must obtain FDA pre-approval for future disease claims and that all claims must be substantiated with randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled human clinical trials (also known as RCTs), calling into question the FTC's recent move toward imposing more rigorous substantiation requirements for disease claims. Critics of the FTC have argued that recent consent orders requiring advertisers to support health-related claims with such studies have had a chilling effect on food and supplement marketers who are fearful of enforcement action and therefore do not provide the public with truthful health information about products, even where they have competent and reliable scientific evidence. Thus, advertisers felt vindicated by the judge's decision.

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Agencies and marketers have to team up to tackle a problem that's stifling creativity and killing business.

A few days ago, a friend called to my attention a recent article about comedian Adam Carolla.

Apparently, Mr. Carolla's production company was among those named in a lawsuit filed by an obscure East Texas firm that claims to own the patent for podcasting, even though podcasting predates this company's patent filing by several years.

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Binge viewing isn't something to fear.

After Netflix released the first season of "House of Cards" in its entirety Feb. 1, the concept of "binge viewing" -- watching multiple episodes of a series in a single sitting -- became a very hot topic. My team and I are tasked with addressing these trends because it always leads to the same question: Is this going to kill linear TV viewing?

The short answer is no. And here's why.

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Fifty years later, the ad messages remain the same.

When Ad Age asked me for my take on how much advertising to women has changed since "The Sexual Sell" chapter in Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique," I had to go and buy a copy to reread it.

I asked the information desk at my local Barnes & Noble where I could find the book -- which turns 50 this year -- and was directed to Women's Studies. I located it quickly, but then found myself browsing through the many brilliant and compelling books alongside it, thinking what a pity they were all categorized in a section that was guaranteed not to attract male browsers and buyers.

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Brands will always crave what's new, which might explain the obsession with startups (no matter how long this phase lasts). Marketers tend to seek out what has forward momentum, and startups are businesses that are the most likely to grow rapidly. On the other hand, they're also the most likely to fail.

With startups proliferating more rapidly than ever, how can marketers keep track of it all?

The best approach is to diversify your investment, and this is especially important given the investment is almost entirely of time rather than money. Here's a portfolio-management approach for keeping track of what's new and next:

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Basing all your marketing on data is not a creative solution

A few weeks ago, I overheard a principal from another agency proudly boast, "Data drives every piece of creative we put out today."

My immediate reaction was, "Boy, your creative must really suck."

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Real-time marketing is all the rage, but what do you need to know to make it work?

Last year was the year that some marketers finally learned how to market their brands at the speed of culture. This is the year that they will get good at it.

As social media has become legitimized, the promise of being a real-time, responsive marketer is something companies have strived for. And, little by little, brands have begun to prove that they can move faster than their bureaucracies. Hopping on a meme as it's becoming one, reacting to world events minutes after they occur or commenting on cultural movements have become commonplace. Despite the progress, we still celebrate a brand moving quickly with the giddiness and effusiveness of a 13-year-old at a One Direction concert.

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