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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 3rd 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.

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