This post won’t go over well with everyone in the design community. Some of them might get their Pantones in a wad over what I’m about to tell you. But by the end, the rest of you will be thanking me. And to the designers that hate this post, it's better that you know the rules then to hate the game.

Social media professionals are starting to connect like the last Cheerios floating in the milk pond of a cereal bowl, and are coalescing into three defined segments:

First and foremost is that today’s youth aren’t as hardwired as I expected to pursue and adapt the latest technology. I was surprised to see that fewer kids than I anticipated were attached to a social channel. Facebook was the primary platform of choice for social communication, and a few students selected personalized channels such as Instagram or Pinterest. Additionally, I was surprised that more kids were not putting their arms around these channels to get a foot in the door for their upcoming career.

Have you ever wondered why printed magazines are still in business? Well, after the train wreck I just went through trying to register for an online contest, I too cannot imagine. Well done Hearst Corporation for destroying my loyalty in your Popular Mechanics enterprise. Meh.

I built my career through on-the-job training over the last 20 years. Yes, I have a traditional “creative” direction/education and therefore have a strong foundation in best practices when it comes to things such as color, composition and concept. And when everything comes together correctly, it results in a well-crafted end product.

Pour a steaming mug of hot cocoa and drop in a handful of marshmallows, kids! It's that special time of year when Justice takes a look at the many facets of branding, marketing, social media, cultural trends and related offshoots, and tries to sound smart by prognosticating on what we can look forward to in 2013.

I figured I'd post this right away because 'oh guess what?' I don't like to wait for anything either! -- This is the second post of a two-part series about how the rapid acceleration of information distribution contributes to an epidemic of anxiety.

This is an interesting subject for me to approach, for it has to do with me personally as well as countless people I feel extremely close to. We are increasingly a society that reaches for pharmaceutical assistance in order to maintain “normality.” About a decade ago, midway through my career, I reached a point where I thought something was wrong with me mentally. Years later I learned this was the result of long-term stress, anxiety and cumulative decision-making that is so prevalent within the world I call my career.

Whether you watched the presidential election results with a “the sky is falling” reaction or a “raise the roof” dance, you can’t argue that we’ve all been affected one way or another. However, the bigger question for me is whether people made their decision early in the campaign season or were influenced by information they picked up closer to Election Day.

There is still a great gap between social storytelling and social media. It’s not nearly as wide as the gulf on Facebook between conservatives and liberals. But it’s a gap nonetheless. The marketer in me says that if I get too far down the storytelling path, the “call to action” for my client may be overlooked within the content. However, social storytellers would say the application of a defined message from an external source could corrupt or misalign the audience’s attention.

When people first construct a “personal brand,” the last thing they're concerned about is juggling the content, data, monitoring and associated analytics that come along for the ride. Personal branding sounds like a great idea on the surface. It allows you to control ownership of your voice, create thought leadership and add credibility to your professional outreach.

You’re producing an upcoming conference, and you have a thousand items on the to-do list. Layer on top of that a budget and needs assessment to go along with the thousand tasks. Reality check: You need to sacrifice a few darlings on your list. Prioritize based on the wants and desires of people attending the event. Your main concern should be the owners of the butts that occupy all those folding chairs. They even supersede your the wants and desires of sponsors. This little detail often seems to escape the novice event producer.

You wanna be one of the cool kids in the marketing lunchroom? Then you damn well better have a blogger outreach program. This is a micro-PR concept in which you research popular bloggers within the context of the client you are trying to promote. More often than not, you want to share a product or service with the blogger with the intent of getting a positive review or mention.

I was incredibly fortunate to participate as a VIP blogger at the recent Smarter Commerce Global Summit 2012. The event was a virtual Who's Who of social media, business, technology, distribution and enterprise experts at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin resort in Orlando Florida.

I was a much younger man then. Fill with energy and rage for that day. Days would follow and we would fall further into blame. The flags went up and so did the fists. Status quo. Today, I take my little girl to school. I look into the eyes of the future, my future, possibly your future. All I see there is love, laughter, dreams and discovery. We must now teach undying fearlessness with dogged practicality.

Trying to explain the thrill of creating a new technology, startup, user experience or integrated marketing tactic is hard to do with just words. But that excitement is ramped up tenfold when you're creating something that affects the real world. Such is the case with the new patent-pending technology that is being released by Starmark. This is the integrated advertising agency that I call home. Here I get to play with some of the most amazingly talented individuals that I've ever had the pleasure to battle for the best ideas. However, when we were challenged to construct the technology that would reward people in the real world, it was a new level.