Those concerns may not be as accurate as they may first appear. We haven’t seen the economy in such a downturn in nearly 30 years, so effectively this is the first time Internet industries have faced this situation (ignoring the dotcom bubble burting days, which arguably Internet businesses brought on by themselves).

Marketing budgets are famously the first budgets to get cut during a recession (in spite of many experts encouraging businesses to increase ad spending to take advantage of the decrease in competition). So when the chips are down, what will marketers do?

Direct marketing

In the late 70s up to 1980 direct marketing (junk mail, telemarketing, coupons) really started taking off. Companies loved direct marketing because they could see a highly accurate measurement of the ROI (Return On Investment). Traditional print, TV and radio increases awareness, but it’s anybody’s guess how that converts to sales. Direct marketing was cheap and the results could be tracked. When the turn of the 80s brought about an ugly state of affairs for the economy, money was pumped into direct marketing as the rather nervous suits making the decisions could see where the spending was going.

Direct mail has clear similarities to digital media: it’s relatively cheap and completely accountable.

More knowledgeable clients

I think everyone involved with digital media in the context of either advertising or web design has experienced clients who know nothing about the Internet and new media. That’s fair enough to a certain degree – it’s ‘new’ after all. Although if you consider 1996 to 98 the ‘breakthrough’ years for the Internet going mainstream, that’s 12 years marketers have had to come to grips with this new medium.

These days ignorance is not an option, and as a result I’m seeing clients increasing their understanding of the Internet. The team at work I’m on seem to be asked less and less to create brochure-ware websites and simple banner campaigns. Instead we’re seeing more clients ask for applications taking advantage of social networks and web services. The clients I work with now are not only getting to grips with the Internet, but they’re actively involved with the development of ideas for new work.

Consumer habits

When I was a kid, if I was spending time at home it would usually involve the TV. These days television takes second place to time spent online. Advertising will want to go where the consumer goes.

Customer engagement

Outside of what would seem like obvious benefits to digital campaigns, such as saving money and tracking ROI, the Internet allows brands to take part in dialogues with its consumers. What were once faceless corporations with no more than a PO Box and a logo can now create a forum for hosting conversations about its products, its industry or any other activity it chooses to be associated with. The Internet has brought brands forward so far that they now have a voice as well as an image.

On the other hand…

Of course, I may be way out. Some of my peers believe that a lot of our clients see digital as an addition to other core marketing activities. For example, a website may be an extension of a TVC. In my opinion that may have been true five years ago, but these days web content stands up by itself. Take a look at how the US presidential nominees ran their campaigns – making use of every social network they could to get their messages out – Facebook, Twitter, and blogs all playing a part.

I’m not the only one

It seems plenty of other bloggers and industry news sites agree (or would like to) that the recession could be good for digital. This article by Netimperetive outlines pretty much what I’ve said already. There’s also this excellent post by Shalabh Pandey about digital media not being phased by the recession. He’s come to the same conclusion as I, and his post benefits from some good references.

2009 – Digital’s golden year?

There’s no doubt that next year is going to be tough for a lot of industries. I wouldn’t want to be making cars right now. For digital we’ll probably start seeing some really innovative ideas coming about as brands move into this space with the moneybags that were destined for the mainstream media.

Knock on effect for dot-coms

Relying on advertising, the dot-coms that are probably feeling a bit glum may want to be a bit more upbeat. If you’re an Ebay or Yahoo! or other publicly listed company you may not have much reason to feel any better since these guys rely on sophisticated business models that go beyond relying on advertising revenue (Ebay bought Skype! Why?). Smaller dot-coms may be better off and end up really benefitting over the next year or two.

Jobs

It’s early days, but I haven’t heard of any digital agencies letting people go. It’s pure speculation, but I expect there will be an anxious period when marketers cut budgets severely and some jobs are lost as a result, but as the Marketing Managers, Account Managers and Planners get into thinking about the following quarter (we’re talking 2nd quarter 2009) they may embrace the potential of the web, leading to the prophesied ‘golden age’.

At work it’s been a bad week for our hosting partner. We found out on Monday that they had been serving Webalizer on our server without telling us for a whole year. So that’s one year of confidential marketing reports freely available to anyone who stumbles on the URL (which was not hard to guess). After ignoring my first request (marked urgent) they replied with a snotty email telling me it stats are installed by default, but these days they don’t do that. Of course, I was overjoyed to hear that their new customers don’t suffer this embarrassing lapse in security.

No apology.

On Tuesday I chased a new account request with them that wasn’t done from the previous day. An equally unapologetic response.

On Wednesday we realised that after repeated requests to have somebody who has moved to another team in my company to be removed as a contact, it still wasn’t done. They told us to go through every individual domain registered with them and to change the contact name listed. We responded with a firm ‘hell no,’ as we’re the paying customer and will not spend hours going through our domains because of their inability to create an efficient management tool. They responded back with what was effectively flipping us the bird, saying they’re not willing to make the changes.

Today they told me that the Senior Developer at Host wasn’t an authorised contact onour account. I sent them email proof that I requested Werner has the same authorisation as I do back in January. Their response was to tell me that we’ve got two accounts, and Werner’s only authorised on one. No apology.

I understand how it can be hard to say sorry. When something goes wrong, putting a ’sorry’ in an email takes guts. Although when you don’t do it, it makes you look cowardly and a little pathetic. We don’t doubt they’re good at what they do, and an apology wouldn’t change that view but actually help us in that we’d know they understood something went wrong and will make sure it doesn’t happen again.

‘Sorry’ for the rant. See?

Now I’m in an agency where I’m the only Web Developer, I’m on the interview panel when it comes to finding other developers. This process has meant I’ve realised how hard it is to find people suitable for the job. There seems to be a mix of designers wanting to try their hand at developing and semi-skilled developers trying to go for a senior position before their time. The creative industry doesn’t seem to attract the talented developers it requires.

I’ve met a few other developers who are skilled but wouldn’t like working in a creative agency. They’re application developers, not web developers. When I asked, they said they actually make an effort to stay clear of jobs like mine. I was not going to be able to convince them to send me their CV. Finding Web Developers for our agency isn’t going to be so easy.

There are characteristics I think developers in creative agencies need to be born with or quickly acquire in order to survive:

1. Social skills. Geeks notoriously don’t have the best people skills, and when it comes to working in a creative agency where sitting in the corner keeping to yourself isn’t going to work, you’re going to have to face up to the fact there’s no getting out of going to lunch with the chatty project manager who thinks as a web developer you should be able to fix his X-Box. I’ve also had to feign an interest in sports a number of times, just to keep up.
2. Ability to work with computer illiterates. Being able to resist self-harm when I’m politely asked to download files and burn them onto a DVD as that is, apparently, what I do for a living. Oh, and I can also offer lots of advice about PowerPoint transitions.
3. Put a project down, picking it up again; repeat. This is more about developing in a way that allows the project to be continued after being put on hold for x amount of time. For example, I’d stop working on Project A because a more urgent Project B needs kicking off, then a number of weeks later I’d be asked to carry on with Project A from where I left off for a couple of days until Project C gets signed off. And no, I can’t get more time for Project A as it’s already over-budget and we don’t want the client back in for another meeting about timings as he eats all the best cookies and hits on the receptionist.
4. Explain yourself in small short words. Bearing in mind that some people in the office still think that a hyperlink is a new type of Japanese train, they’re not going to understand DNS propegation is the reason we can’t launch the website right now, after lunch on a Friday afternoon. Explaining technical concepts to non-technical people take a long patience and short words.
5. Fight for testing. Or test post-launch. Testing is something expected by everyone to be in the project plan, it even makes it into the Gantt charts the producer writes up, but it will be the first thing to go if the deadline looms a little too close for comfort. Or there may be a testing phase, but this is soon followed by changes to the creative that nullifies all testing done so far. Or there will be a testing phase, but only after the site has launched. I can’t point the finger of blame at anyone in particular, as it’s the way things work when you’ve got a small project with a tough deadline. The client asks for changes but the deadline won’t move. Proper testing seems to be a luxury reserved for those clients lacking extensive change requests and a clear understanding of what ’signing off’ really means.
6. See the design as the designer sees it. I’m anal about my work, so quite rightfully the designer will be anal about hers. A bad designer will never say when I’ve messed up a design because she’s scared of me, a good designer will tell me about a mistake I made, a great designer will tell me that I messed up and then tell me why it needs to be fixed. If I can understand the thinking behind the design, I can build it better.

I don’t think that working for a creative agency makes me a better developer, or a worse one. I do think it means I have to approach projects differently. I think working for an agency means you So there are quite specific skills that I think are needed to work in a creative agency as a developer. A lot of these skills are a little different from the stereotypical developer skillset. However, a lot of very talented developers do prefer the creative environment (I just need to find them). I like the small and exciting projects I do in a creative agency. I don’t have the attention span to stay put on one application for months on end. I’d rather download files and burn them obediently to a DVD for the TV producer who doesn’t know what a codec is, whilst performing self-harm here at my desk with a soggy cocktail stick.

My problem is that on my Facebook (this idea could apply to other sites but in this post I’m just going to use Facebook) I have lots of people listed as friends. I have a few close friends, then I have friends who I know but who aren’t close – workmates, friends of friends and so on. Then the bulk is made up of the people who I haven’t seen in years, but for some reason are still my friend. The result is too much information for me to manage that isn’t effectively organised. Sure, Facebook lets me define who I want to hear more about and who I want to hear less about, but this is a manual control and I think it should be able to work this out by itself.

How can a system like Facebook work out which is more important to me: wedding photos from someone I went to school with; knowing that my flatmate ‘is bored at work’; or photos of my workmate’s new dog?

Step 1: How much do I care about the person?
Facebook could work this out from the amount of correspondence between my friends and myself on the site. Then there’s the number of photos we appear in together and the groups or networks we’re both members of. Although granted, my close friends and I don’t speak exclusively through Facebook, so some manual intervention may be necessary. But for the most-part my degree of ‘closeness’ with the friends I have on Facebook could be calculated.

Step 2: How important is the news to others?
First of all the relative importance of the news for the author could be calculated by how often the author posts news. By taking the ‘cry wolf’ concept; if someone posts news every day it is possibly less important than someone else who has posted an item for the first time in three months.

Step 3: How popular is the news to other people who know this person as well as I do?
If someone else has clicked on a news item for a mutual friend we both went to school with, it’s possibly also interesting to me. If I post an item that only my close friends have shown an interest in, it probably won’t be of interest to someone I worked with years ago and don’t speak to any longer.

Existing Features
Facebook already allows you to select the kind of news you want to see more of. So for example, if you happen to like seeing new photos from your friends, it will offer these up. If you don’t like seeing people’s status changes you can see less of them. You can also select the people you’re more interested in, as well the people you’re not interested in – although this is done manually: Facebook can’t determine how ‘interested’ you are in each of your friends by your dealings with them through the site.

Opening It Up
Of course, a lot of people are on more than one social network. A decent aggregator would sit outside of Facebook and MySpace, watching and analysing everyone’s reactions to news.

Potentially, the system could even take on StumbleUpon to monitor more than social network activity. If several people you know visit a certain website, or a news story or video, you could be alerted to the same content based on how close you are to the friends who also visited that page.

It’s a matter of managing mass-information. As more people become proactive in creating web content, there should be a way of managing the publicising of this content to the right people. Monitoring social interactions does wreak of an Owellian telescreen; but there should be a way of creating a system that would benefit its users rather than its administrators.

There’s the albino kid who dropped out of school; the sporty kid who was loud; the clever one who was obnoxious; the guy who I thought would never be a civil servant but is. All of the above: their lives aren’t quite as rosy as their school reports may have indicated.

It sounds elitist and terribly mean, but everyone seems to be doing it. Only the other day someone I work with said how she just saw wedding photos on Facebook of a girl she went to school with who punched her in the face once. She got fat and hadn’t aged particularly well, which had an immediate and positive effect on my colleague’s outlook on herself.

I think it’s all about self-assurance. The best way we can see how well we’re doing in life is to compare ourselves to those we started out with. Where are they and where am I?

Of course success is measured by the individual’s perception of what success is. The girl my workmate poked fun at may in turn see my colleague and think how she’s approaching 30, working too hard and still has no ring on her finger, and then there’s no sign of kids for the next few years at least.

The friends in your Facebook aren’t necessarily your friends. They’re individual benchmarks for you to measure yourself up against. Although be warned: the slow kid who wet himself in school assembly that one time who is now a successful entrepreneur with a supermodel wife may find you on Facebook and might just ruin your day.