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We have reached the point in the year when we all feel compelled to make predictions (or perhaps just me).  So here goes:

1. Financial crisis will get worse, hit rock bottom and start getting better but reports will continue to be gloomy.  Towards the end of the year a slow and painful recovery will be under way.

2. Expect a few more dramatic surprises in the economic sector (more countries going under?) and companies doing things they have never done before.

3. Advertising and marketing budget will remain frozen – leading to the start of  reorganisation of the marketing organisation (firing of people and suppliers)

4. The Web will be the only channel that continues to grow – getting the attention of CEO level as core business tool (often for the first time since the last bubble)

5. Change in advertising will be permanent – as in: no going back to the old ways of excessive spending on TV and traditional advertising (although some milder form will be back in the later part of the year)

6. Social networks will continue to grow, more scandals will emerge on privacy and consumers will continue to ignore them

7. Someone will try coining Web 3.0 but people will resist as they will still be recovering from Web 2.0

8. Technological innovation will continue and the mobile phone will begin to appear as the next main channel for internet consumption

9. Obama will create a new american image and will benefit from an extended honeymoon period (and a virtual absence of organised opposition) which will take him into 2010 (at which point he will remain popular, but opposition will start returning and the republicans will start reforming)

If you want to start looking at the predictions being for made for 2009 in emarketing, check out this compilation made by Zazoo.

It’s time to start working on those plans, make those assumptions and figure how to prepare for a year that will be a year of change, unpredictable events and plenty of surprise (wait a minute, that was 2008!).

One of my favourites is from Integrated campaign metrics - “The holy grail of marketing will get one step closer as technology starts to allow a more integrated metrics reporting of campaign media.” – but then again we having been getting closer to this every year for the past ten years…

And also from ClickZ comes the predictable prediction: “The coming year in advertising is predicted to be, if nothing else, unpredictable.”

Watch this space and you will see my own predictions for 09.

http://www.zazoo.com.au/2008/12/18/and-this-is-the-year-that-will-be/

A few months ago, when the crisis/recession started dominating the news in Europe, we tried to understand how these changes would affect our business – that is the business of online marketing.  We shared with you a couple of articles from McKinsey, the Economist and other sources (on this blog and on Ning) that all pointed to the possibility of the trend not affecting the web in a direct way or perhaps even the opposite.

Over the past two weeks I have been observing, first hand, the consequence of this trend in our day to day activities.  I have had a succession of meetings with new clients, sometimes old prospects, who have been very open to the very serious exploration and use of the internet as their core marketing channel for next year.  They all agree on the same thing: traditional marketing has been ‘frozen’ or cut or put on hold completely.  On the other hand they recognize that the web is a comparatively low cost alternative and is measurable.  Many of these companies or individuals have never taking this line before, and I think that it is actually being driven by the environment.

So it seems as if 2009, might be the year of the shift to online that we have been expecting for some time, driven not by hype, but by necessity, experience and an almost inevitable transformation of the marketing landscape.

We have yet to see how far and how deep the transformation will be, but 2009 will probably mark the no return shift to a new marketing structure.  Clearly, this is a very bad time to be in traditional advertising.