Half her life ago, when Laura Klauberg was her oldest daughter's age, she encountered branding campaigns that remain with her today. "I loved the old Coke spots — Mean Joe Greene comes to mind," she says, also mentioning memorable ads by Miller Lite, FedEx, Levi's 501 jeans, Oscar Mayer, and McDonald's. She mentions, too, the TV and print campaigns launched for Calvin Klein that were striking and provocative for their time. "All of these ads leveraged humor, jingles, memorable kids, or sex," she says. "Some of those same principles still apply today, although expressed in a way more relevant for the times," such as video.

One of the ways Klauberg keeps up with current best practices is by keeping up with her daughters, ages 18, 22, and 24. She says they have given her a window into how media consumption is radically changing. Below, in her own words, she elaborates:

"Their behavior is quite striking. Overall, their traditional television and radio consumption is quite low. With the exception of sports programming, there is little appointment viewing in our house. That's not to say that they don't have their favorite shows. But they either DVR them, buy the boxed set of DVDs, or watch them online. Rarely do they watch them live.

A year ago we gave them iPhones as their Christmas gifts and they haven't stopped thanking us since! They could live without just about anything but their iPhones. They also are Mac junkies and consume most content online — always in pursuit of new music, blogger commentary, and interesting reviews or the latest indie film.

Facebook, which once dominated their lives, still absorbs some of their time but not to the degree it once did, at least for my two older daughters. Yes, they tweet from time to time but I wouldn't consider them addicts. I would say they are early adopters of new technology.

There's no question about the role it plays in their lives. In fact, I was astonished when one of my daughters recently announced that she was giving up her cable subscription since she never watches TV anymore. On top of that, my youngest daughter, who is a college freshman, just received a mailing from the university that says: 'We know for students the laptop is the new TV. In mom's generation, it was all about TVs…but in our halls there are only three out of 80 students with a TV.'

I call that a generational sea change."