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In the head­long rush towards the Christ­mas break, it’s easy to for­get that people have been mark­ing this time of year for pretty much as long as there have been people. It’s the shortest day today – marked across mil­len­nia as the turn­ing point when we begin look­ing for­ward to the future. Tra­di­tion­ally, this has been a time of optim­ism – longer days, shorter nights, the prom­ise of bet­ter times to come.

Of course, just now, optim­ism is in pretty short sup­ply around the world.

So what of the year to come? Well, it’s unlikely to be a wall-to-wall party. And even the sup­posed eco­nomic gurus really have very little idea of what might hap­pen. But let’s not reach for the razor blades just yet.

The les­sons from pre­vi­ous reces­sions (this will be my 3^rd in the industry) are that those com­pan­ies that con­tinue to invest in mar­ket­ing will come out of the down­turn expo­nen­tially stronger (and do so for less over­all cost). And, in a tough mar­ket, every com­pany will need every single edge it can muster to win the war for a greater share of dimin­ish­ing budgets.

Within this con­text, demand gen­er­a­tion activ­it­ies will come increas­ingly to the fore­front. If the sell-out attend­ance of our recently co-sponsored Demand Gen­er­a­tion Sum­mit is any­thing to go by this is already hap­pen­ing. It will also be more import­ant than ever for those in mar­ket­ing to work hand in glove with those in sales (see Amanda Job­bins’ present­a­tion at the Sum­mit). Meas­ur­ab­il­ity and agil­ity in the face of chan­ging cir­cum­stances will be more cru­cial than ever.

There is of course spec­u­la­tion about whether demand gen­er­a­tion is any­thing new or just a new term for some­thing far older. Per­son­ally, I hope that the industry embraces demand gen­er­a­tion in a wider sense than simply a series of dis­con­nec­ted short term activ­it­ies designed to fill the sales fun­nel (aka tra­di­tional lead gen­er­a­tion). Tac­tical activ­ity is import­ant, of course it is, but tac­tics alone can lead to a dis­join­ted, piece­meal approach to acquir­ing and main­tain­ing cus­tom­ers over the long term.

Demand gen­er­a­tion today is as much a philo­sophy as an activ­ity. It’s about deliv­er­ing ever chan­ging, ever improv­ing com­mu­nic­a­tions, inter­ac­tions and exper­i­ences. It’s about using smart tech­no­logy to auto­mate and integ­rate these pro­grammes wherever pos­sible. Ulti­mately it’s about cre­at­ing and sus­tain­ing momentum from pro­spect to sale and beyond.

What will 2009 bring? Search me. But it’ll be the busi­nesses that adapt to the chal­lenges (and re-adapt as they change) that are likely to be the win­ners come the inveit­able upturn.