My good friend and colleague Erik du Plessis wants to set the record straight. Too many people, he believes, are misinterpreting his book The Advertised Mind, mistakenly concluding that emotions dominate our thinking, and that, as a result, our decision making is irrational and unpredictable. On Friday, at a set of presentations hosted by Millward Brown South Africa, he set out to address this misunderstanding.

As I was sitting in the departure lounge of the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow, I saw a  swan fly past the window. I remember wondering if the bird had flight clearance. The fleeting glimpse of that beautiful bird will be one of the most distinctive memories that I will take away from my first visit to the new British Airways facility. The rest of the experience has already faded into a blurred memory of steel, glass and chrome.

Among the most popular applications on Facebook today are those that allow people to identify themselves in terms of their taste in movies or books, or their similarity to a Harry Potter character or a Disney princess. These applications provide a creative and fun way of sharing information and creating a sense of connection.

According to one of the Disney applications, I’m Mulan. I guess if you have seen the Disney movie, you now know something about me. And that, I think, is the attraction of social networks. They allow us to create communities that stretch across geographies and time zones. It does not matter whether a friend is in New York, New Zealand, China, Italy or Mexico; the News Feed provides a way of staying in touch.

The Advertising Research Foundation Annual Conference is one of those events I love to hate. I look forward to catching up with old friends and acquaintances, hopefully making some new ones, and maybe, just maybe, learning something new. The trouble is, it is not easy to focus on the content when parallel presentations are spread across numerous different rooms and alcoholic beverages are readily on hand. The following is some wheat that I managed to sift from the chaff of interminable sales pitches dressed up as new learning, vendors acting like old-time snake oil salesmen, and people seeking to exploit our collective insecurities by suggesting that all we know is no longer valid.

A few weeks ago, Focalyst, a specialty practice of Millward Brown, issued a new report on the group they’ve dubbed the “Green Boomers.” For a great overview of the Focalyst results, click here to view the interview with Jack Lett, executive director of Focalyst, that ran on Wednesday’s “Money for Breakfast”show on the Fox Business Channel.  (Search on “Boomers” to find the video.) Then today I chatted with a reporter from The Wall Street Journal about (Red)™, the for-profit venture that aims to channel funds from the private sector into the Global Fund to fight the AIDS pandemic in Africa. The journalist wanted my view on how well (Red) seems to be doing. Given the prominence that “green” is getting these days, it made me wonder if (Red) is losing share of mind to a more “newsworthy” concern that strikes closer to home.