Hello. It's hard to believe another year has passed, and in 2010 we will be starting on our ninth year of producing this newsletter. We'd love to have your thoughts on what topics we should cover in the coming months. Feel free to drop me a note and let me know your thoughts. Let's get going.

Creatively yours,

Harry Hoover

By Harry Hoover

There's usually some downtime at work around the holidays. What are you doing with your break? I'm using mine to meet with clients and prospects and to complete my planning for 2010. Do you have a marketing plan for the year? What new items are you incorporating into your plan?

Here are a few things I'm thinking about for 2010.

How much should I budget - both in terms of my time and money - toward marketing and PR? Does it make sense to spend it in traditional marketing, in PR, in direct marketing, in social media or in some combination?

Have the media habits of my clients and prospects - marketers and HR executives in Fortune 1000 companies - changed? With which media are they spending more time and which ones have they abandoned? Where is their pain in 2010? Are they still short-staffed and looking for outside resources to round out their teams?

Based on some of the research I'm seeing, it looks like marketing budgets will be up a bit this year. According to eMarketer,

"Next year, while broadcast television, radio, newspaper and magazine spending continue to downsize, though more slowly than in 2009, online ad spending will enjoy a nice bump-up: eMarketer currently forecasts 5.5% growth. And the increase won't all come from search—banner ads will grow 3.3%, and online video will jump by 40%."

By Harry Hoover

It comes as no surprise to me that Americans are trying harder than ever to avoid advertising. According to a new study by Synovate,

"More than four in 10 US consumers said they were skipping ads on TV and the radio as well as avoiding Websites with intrusive ads more in 2009 than they were the year before."

Why, you ask? Because advertising is increasingly less relevant. We've discussed this before: advertising needs to be relevant, original and impactful or consumers will avoid it like the plague. And they certainly won't share the ad with their friends.

"When asked about positive ad-related activities, such as searching for advertisements online, sharing and discussing ads with friends, or following brands on Facebook and Twitter, responses were in the single digits. Most consumers reported never doing any such activities."

Relevant ads get shared. But most ads aren't relevant because the advertiser hasn't done the hard part: determining who his target audience is from a demographic and psychographic perspective. The more you know about the customer, the easier it is for your creatives to develop relevant, original and impactful messages, and to determine the best ways and vehicles through which to disseminate your messages.