That wailing and gnashing of teeth you were subjected to last month? Most likely traditional ad people crying into their champagne over the announcement that Draft Worldwide, a direct marketing company, would take over Foote, Cone & Belding, a traditional advertising firm.

While the move has shaken many in the advertising industry, to us it seems more like an inevitable result of the ongoing shift from “blast it everywhere” mass advertising strategies to the “talk to me where and when I choose” reality of consumer empowerment circa 2006.

But let’s take a minute to address the critics’ outrage: What, they demand incredulously, could a “below the line” agency know about running a mainstream advertising agency?

Plenty. No one should doubt that Howard Draft, founder of the eponymous agency and now chief executive of the newly merged firm, is a force to be reckoned with. From a small shop, he’s grown Draft into a marketing colossus that generates, by some estimates, $350 million in revenue.

The reality on the ground in 2006 is that nothing is certain — or sacred. The Draft/FCB merger heralds the collapse of the wall (moat?) between “traditional” advertising and direct. In an age when consumers drive the marketing relationship, accountability is king, and the Internet is changing everything, traditional forms of advertising appear more anachronistic by the week.

Pardon our somewhat biased view, but the future of the marketing industry has been clear for some time: Either figure out a way to engage the consumer on her time and in the location of her choosing (and with a message she wants to consume) or get off the pot. But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?