What my research and dealings with CMOs tells me is that the job is less and less about marketing, and more and more about corporate strategy and leadership. And that the challenges in front of you as a corporate officer, rather than the head of marketing, have more to do with understanding the customer than understanding CPMs and creative.

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.

The problem with digital marketing isn't a lack of data, it's a lack of imagination. These seven changes are already dramatically affecting what marketing is and should be. Adapting to the implications will allow the creation of a more future-proof you.

Here’s a summary of my 12 predictions for 2012 -- far from comprehensive, in no particular order, and ready-made for you to argue with. No doubt a whole lot more will happen, but these are the things I'll be looking for.

What did we learn from the events of 2011 that might help us work smarter in the year ahead? Several things happened, but the lessons boil down to just one: Know what your brand stands for to your core customers and you’ll do the right thing.

Marketing has changed in profound ways. Not just the tools, though those have too. But I’m talking about the outdated stuff that was in your marketing textbooks in college and what you learned in your first few jobs if you’ve been in this business for more than 5 or 10 years -- with one big exception.

Communicating online allows companiesto “brand” themselves in ways that we’ve never even considered in the past. It’s a bit like earning a reputation, but different in that it’s not a good or bad thing -- it’s more that you’re associated with a particular expertise or genre.

There are no formulas for success, but there are patterns. Rather than understanding the underlying patterns, though, and being driven by purpose and passion, leaders are trying to gain complete assurance by analyzing data.

Recent technology change, and the resulting changes in human social behaviors, is leading us to a complete disruption of the marketing industry as it has been established over the last 100 years. Everything you have learned about how to do effective 20th and early 21st century broadcast marketing will collapse into a black hole of irrelevance

Not familiar with Vucu? It stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous which is going to require a new set of skills .

What we call “branding” today is a corporate, cosmetic undertaking, detached from people’s personal character. It's an artifact of the industrial age that is holding back marketing thought and organizational action in this post-industrial time.

The frustration driving Occupy Wall Street and the widespread sympathy people feel for it could blossom into a broader anti-consumerism. Will that cause more people to become skeptical of advertising messages published by big brands?

If advertisers do not address leveraging social media to engage customers, and do so increasingly through mobile devices, and then figure out how to measure the value through attribution modeling--then 2012 is a lost opportunity. Dare I say: a “-1.”

The glowing light of physical-space advertising has become interactive and augmented. No longer is the media sphere largely separate from those observing it. Increasingly, we are seeing an augmented advertising that blurs the physical bodies in the crowd with the advertising medium itself.

There were three truisms I learned early in my email marketin career that have been floating around so long that they were almost taken as gospel. Two of them turned out to be dead wrong — and for the time being, at least, so is the third one.

Our research suggests that interactive media and technology marketing investments in 2016 will account for as much money as their TV advertising budgets do today, because interactive efforts now play a legitimate -- not experimental -- role in how businesses attract and retain customers. But marketing and advertising remain different things.

The simple truth is your advertising money goes a lot further online, and you’re able to target audiences more precisely than through other more traditional means. It’s certainly no coincidence that we’re seeing a significant uptake in online campaigns for our clients.

If you follow the trend lines and the investments, you see the world of commerce is expanding to handle smarter and ubiquitous cell phones, and brick and mortar shops are now able to cash in on the latest technologies and channels. The challenge becomes how to market to and engage with and manage so many new potential customers and channels and do it on a budget which makes your CXOs happy.

Once I turn 55, advertisers, marketers, and networks will see me as though I was part of my father's generation. I am not. When my father was my age, his son had already graduated from college, moved out of the house, and started working. I have a 12-year-old son and have probably spent more money this year on video games than on food.

Complimentary edibles on flights are back, thanks to what the industry is calling "snackvertising," a win-win-win-win for flyers, airlines, advertisers, and the company that makes it all possible.

Gen X online habits are so fractured that it’s hard to pin down. However, more than any other generation, Gen X likes to research while shopping online. They read more reviews, and visit more opinion sites.

What are we to make of eMarketer’s forecasted 0.9 percent drop this year in spend in traditional media, not to mention the seesaw nature of the estimated spend over the next four years? Should we be surprised at all the uncertainty, given the rapid and constant changes in technology and the migration of consumers to the Internet and mobile, among other distractions?

The Web is changing from a world wide library with some commercial content to a world wide mall with intellectually interesting publications buried under it, in virtual catacombs.

When brands control the environment and use content to bring useful information to customers and prospective customers, their conversion and retention rates improve.