Winding up our week long 'vacation' in Colorado with the daughter and her family. I use the term 'vacation' loosely, of course. The week was jam-packed with work. I like to say work is play, and it is, mostly - but, one of these days, I'm going to take a real vacation and leave the work at home. Yeah, one of these days.

As part of my job, I read a whole lot of newsletters, media sites, emails from PR firms, and books on the subjects of women, marketing to women, leadership, business, social media, and more. When I find truly relevant content that's worth sharing, I try to share. Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day, so many days in the week - and some of the wonderful content that comes my way gets lost. Not Lost, as in the TV show, but lost as in - either misplaced or outdated.

Today, I have excellent content to share. I'm really focused these days on social media, partly for clients, partly for myself. As social media and social marketing continue to change the way the world looks at all things in context: from advertising to marketing to networking to just communicating, I find it interesting that there is a reluctance by so many otherwise smart people to ignore this dynamic.

With that in mind, I think this article over at HotelMarketing.com is a must-read. Titled "Ten Principles of consumer Generated Advertising Campaigns," it touches upon the reasons you should be engaged in social media, now, today - not tomorrow. The Ten Tips actually comes from  Consumer Generated Advertising Campaigns, written by two excellent writers who not only 'get it' - they share it.

I'm especially attached to tip number 9. Embrace Criticism And Deprecation: You’ve got to take the bad with the good. While a good strategy will acknowledge and plan for detractors, the reality is that everyone is empowered to publish. Accept and embrace this truth, and leverage criticism or deprecation as a gift of feedback and opportunity. >Hear, hear!!!<

In keeping with this idea, I also found some compelling content from Andrea Learned, someone I try to keep in touch with but often do not. Andrea wrote about "the conceptual age" recently, at Huffinton Post. Quoting from Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, Andrea notes that, "We still need the logic, certainly, but with so many choices we are now freed up to prioritize the the non-rational, more emotional side of things." She goes on to note that this might be a "less genderized way, to package the idea of marketing to women..."

I'm not sure I agree there is a 'less genderized way' to do anything. I believe gender accounts for a great deal of everything we do, whether we realize it or not. To see how this might work, I attempted to take the gender test Andrea links to in her article, but... as are most tests like this, I found it unfullfilling. I failed to do most of the tasks because the 'answers' to the questions were, in my opinion, unqualified. Having to pick one answer over another when I did not like either, causes me no end of frustration. After about four of the 'tasks' I got bored and gave up. (At one point I clicked randomly because I was impatient - and I scored 6 out of 12 right and the test told me I was right-brained, when earlier it had said I was left-brained).

So, perhaps we are in a conceptual age now. Perhaps gender is not driving advertising - but you can't prove it by me.