Launching a campaign is like launching a nuclear missile: both the agency and the client have to turn their key. So when a campaign goes awry, such as Ashton Kutcher's recent "brownface" Popchips ad, it's unfair for the client to implicate the agency.

A CMO of a prominent B2B company recently told me she thought of Pinterest as a game for moms and didn't consider a "pinboard" a serious business tactic. Reminds me of the days when blogs were called "journals" or "diaries" and their ability to support business objectives was dismissed..

The 30-second pre-roll is the blink tag of our era. It's the ad format that drives users crazy, and it's just not right for Web or mobile. Here's how to fix video advertising and make online video profitable for everyone.

Mobile and Web advertising is where real growth is happening. It’s essential for advertisers to start exploring new ways to serve ads in mobile search, within apps, and on various social media networks to truly understand what budgets are required to achieve specific campaign goals.

You can’t be an agency anymore and just collect your commission or fee. Almost everything you used to do has been automated and commoditized, just like in other industries. Plus, you now have to be a partner with the entity formerly known as the client. Here's how to survive all the changes.

Despite being nowhere near a sales funnel that might eventually deposit me behind the wheel, I am besieged by car and car-related pitches. By any ROI calculation, it's a waste -- one you'd think would be avoidable in our age of big data, hyper-targeting, and ultra-accountable marketing. But both the will and the execution have been weak when it comes to TV targeting.

From the presentations at the summit and from speaking with other executives in the mobile business, it is clear that larger brands are taking steps to address the radical shifts in Web usage taking place. The reality is that if they haven't already, brands need to also address mobile in their overall marketing mix and acquisition strategies.

Samsung has the potential to one day earn the Apple-like following they covet, but to do so, they need to divert their energy from making smarmy commercials to making truly great products again.

We truly are in a golden era, a period of unlimited creative opportunity. So make it good because consumers no longer tune you in; they decide whether or not to tune you out.

Huggies has apologized on Facebook for their latest ad, yet another commercial implying that U.S. dads (a third of whom are the primary caregiver for their kids) are a bunch of bumbling idiots. The company has since pulled the ads -- which are by no means the worst of their sort.

It’s no wonder Americans have been high-tailing it for the ’burbs for decades: Cities seem to never fail to find fresh ways to look like doofuses. From Fruita, CO, to Flora, IL, here are some of the sorriest attempts to make a community look like someplace you'd want to live.

Apple has saved itself a ton of marketing headaches by simply calling the latest iteration of its tablet, iPad. If it hadn't stopped now, what would it have named the sixth or twelfth generation?

The only way that advertising will be acceptable and work, according to a recent consumer survey, is to know their personal interests, make it relevant to what they're doing, and be specific to their location. Sorry, kids but that can't happen if you click that "do not track" button.

Most of my clients are larger corporations, but we’re a small business, and I never thought I’d yearn for the cozy embrace of Google and it’s small biz-friendly methodologies and mechanisms. The new design and rules accompanying the Timeline version of Facebook pages is a boon to big business, and a blow to small business.

Content marketing is brand building at its best, because it is patient and high-minded. Gary Vaynerchuk talks about “paying it forward” in this video. That’s right, you have to actually care about your customers. Otherwise, just stick to advertising.

The insurance company for which I'm CMO took steps to shift our conversation with customers from one that was centered on a product to one that was centered on people. That strategy produced a multi-faceted advertising campaign that gave us the ability to connect with consumers on a local level.

Designers like me can self-importantly imagine that the logo is the most important part of a brand. And while it is a critical piece of the brand-puzzle, this chain of events reminded me that the most important piece of a brand is, in fact, the company itself.

I loved Chrysler's "Halftime in America" Super Bowl ad, and I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of the tens of millions of people who saw it felt similarly. The buzz about its political bent produced millions of free media mentions. The problem is that it didn't have anything remotely to do with Chrysler's brand.

Our regional insurance company's campaign has been named the “Best Local Ad Campaign We Never Tire Of.” To get here, we developed a detailed branding strategy rooted in a series of decisions all brands can make (and the smart ones do), which has helped pave the way for our campaign’s success.

To be frank, ethics and marketing don’t go together all that well. But I predict that in 2012 we'll see a rise in the importance of ethics, with a kind of WikiLeaks emerging to tackle the maneuverings of less-ethical brands.

Tegardless of whether you like Cupcake wines, there’s much marketing wisdom to be learned from their example. They know their audience and have smartly crafted everything from their labels to their Web content to appeal to it.

The ad in this photo is technology-centric, marketing-focused, and customer-indifferent. It's a multilayered example of some dangerous business thinking.

According to the results of a survey of women small business professionals, there are six mistakes businesses need to avoid when marketing to women. You know your brand should target women; here's how not to mess it up.

The big CMO dilemma today includes such questions such as: What about measurement of all these new platforms? What does it mean that Coke has 36 million Facebook followers? Mobile phones seem to be creating a rebirth of discounting; how can I avoid that? With all the data we have these days, I think we should be finding answers to some of these questions. But we're not.