It's about time to close down Welcome to Optimism for the year and make the customary valedictory remarks about 2008. Things are a bit frantic here as people depart for the holidays, so this will have to be brief.

2008 has not been an easy year for our industry.

At the start of the year no-one would have predicted that within 12 months high street banks would crash, Woolies and MFI would go bust (well, OK, you might have predicted Woolies) and General Motors would be on the brink of bankruptcy, along with the entire country of Iceland.

Our clients have also faced an increasingly challenging climate and the the economic crisis has inevitably affected our business.       

However, despite these difficult conditions we have had a successful year in 2008.  That success is due to the talent, determination and hard work of our amazing people. Big thanks is due to all our wonderful, talented, committed and unusually attractive W+K people. 

What can we look forward to in the new year? Well, forecasts for 2009 suggest that the situation will become increasingly tough. The Guardian on December 4^th wrote, ‘The

UK

media sector will fare the worst of any developed country in 2009 with total advertising spend set to fall 6% year on year.’

We aren't at the bottom of this recession yet and we shouldn’t expect recovery within the next 12 months. Businesses will continue to go under, unemployment will rise and we can expect to see widespread redundancies and probably some closures and mergers in the advertising business. All this will mean that our hard-pressed clients will expect more from us – creatively, strategically and commercially.

2009 will be a hard year. But there is good news for us.                        

We have a robust, profitable, growing business. We have no debt and are independent – two great attributes right now

We are not a 'generic' agency; our strong reputation and distinctive positioning separate us from most of our competition.

We have a roster of fantastic, healthy clients that other agencies would kill to get their hands on.

Here's to a merry christmas and, with some hard work and some luck, a prosperous new year.

Welcome to Optimism in 2009!

Ian writes:

Ian