For reference, on my little Bucket Blog, I recently set a new record for comments at 13, but several were me chatting up my readers.? On this social media blog, it’s all reader comments.

This blog does have some things going for it that I don’t. The author, Catharine P. Taylor, is a legend in the advertising trade press. A key player in AdWeek’s 00’s resurgence and founder of their AdFreak blog, she was pushed aside last year, leading to the title’s decline many say.

Her name alone is not enough to generate this kind of interest. Indeed, her own blog that covers the general NYC/USA advertising industry enjoys good engagement, but not like the social media blog.

My take-away is that this is a critically important area of the marketplace. Companies are asking their ad agencies to guide them into these market-converations, but it’s really a case of the blind leading the blind.

Hence the explosion of comments on this blog. Also, the quality of the discussion on the social media blog is similarly exceptional. Very smart, very experienced marketers are realizing that their entire way of doing business — their unique value equation — is changing in front of their eyes.

This new world is a much more difficult place to “create interest” where there is none, to “build a brand position” that doesn’t fit the facts. At best, you can fool some of the people some of the time. At best.

So agencies are being asked by their clients to lead those clients to the place where the agency is no longer relevant.? Now that’s entertainment.