Next time you’re in a theater in Boston--or down on the Cape, or out in the Berkshires, or on Broadway, or pretty much anywhere, really--take a look around at the audience. Chances are you’ll notice something missing: young people. What you’re likely to see instead is wave upon wave of gray hair. Most of the seats will be occupied by baby boomers and those of the generation born around the time of World War II. Thirtysomethings will be scarce; twentysomethings will be even scarcer. And teenagers? Don’t ask.

A new study by Facebook brings some big news that, curiously, at first blush might not seem like much news at all. It's this: If you want to create successful ads for the social network, just do the same thing you would do if you were advertising on TV. Or in magazines. Or on the radio. But here's the thing: Until now, Sean Bruich, head of measurement at Facebook, tells Fast Company, marketers have been unsure about how, exactly, to advertise on the social network. It's a new medium, and a whole conventional wisdom has emerged about dos and don'ts, telling brands they need to interact differently with consumers on Facebook than they have in other forms of media. Be conversational, for example, or be interactive.

I believe one of the most powerful methods for synching up your brand with the zeitgeist, or people’s unrealized wants and needs, is by tapping into good old-fashioned empathy. You may wonder how to institute empathy as a capability in the marketing department. Empathy cannot be mapped and measured empirically. Nor is it an activity that you can clock in at work and start “doing” like market research, design, or project management.

So Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion. Then last week, out of nowhere, Facebook releases the Facebook Camera app--what is clearly the not-so-secret Instagram knockoff they’d had in development for a while now. In other words, Zuckerberg bought the original, and then he started selling knockoffs. A strange move? Maybe, maybe not. It seems to me that Facebook is buying themselves a bit of time, offering consumers better photo sharing on the go while deciding how much or little they should ingest the soul of Instagram (I’m guessing very little). But it is a fascinating case study, either way, like when Batman and the Joker battle one another one day, just to team up to take down the Penguin on another. And there’s a lot each could learn from one another’s apps. Let’s look at them side-by-side.

It’s the mouthwash principle. And it’s critical to powerful leadership. If you want to make an impact on people, to influence their behavior in some way, you have to keep sharing the message, coming at it from different angles and at different times long after you think you’re done.

Last month, I learned what Dian Fossey must have felt like in Gorillas in the Mist, surrounded by mysterious creatures and unknown dangers, and yet compelled to edge ever closer. On my right in full costume was someone outfitted as an adorable, and somehow huggable, green hammerhead robot...in a dress. (I later learned she was in the garb of a Japanese video game character from Katamari Damacy.) At a table in front of me was a young man who just received a free copy of Far Cry 3 for letting Ubisoft, the gaming company, shave his head with a mohawk.

This is a tricky subject, and a difficult one for many nonprofits to address: How can you get your board to raise more money on your behalf? I’m not talking about "show boards," those boards of directors that you asked people to be on just so you could attach their name to your cause (usually well known local people)... you knew what you were getting into there, and it wasn’t having the board doing lots of work.