Brand and
communication
predictions for 2009
Thailand 2008 12 29
ronnestam.com
Innovative Communication from Sweden with Love

Last year, inspired by ReadWriteWeb I stuck my nose out
and tried to predict what 2008 would bring us in terms of
trends, technology, communication and ideas. About 70% of
my thoughts were confirmed but I of course missed out on
some too.
2008 is coming to an end and it’s time for me to let that
poor nose of mine feel the heat again. 2009 is harder to
predict than ever since we have a free falling economy in
the world at the moment. How will smaller budgets effect
advertising, investments in technology, self confidence
and personal evolvement? Hell if I knew, but here are
some ideas
Happy New Year - Johan Ronnestam

Here are 9 things/trends
I believe you should look
out for and possibly follow
in 2009

1. Technology becomes a
commodity and ideas prosper
from it
Open Source in combination with broadband access in low cost
producing countries will make companies move their technology
projects outside their local markets. Companies that earn money
from building content management, blogs, communities and other
common systems have to move their competence from production
towards ideas.
After all, who will pay €100 000 for a content management
system when you can get Typo3, Magento, Wordpress, Pligg,
Joomla, Drupal and other excellent systems for free. On top of
that, have people in India bidding for it and you’ll end up
paying $600 instead of $60 000 for the implementation of it.
Making it do the right thing and look right, that’s something
we wont oursource just yet. So, bet on ideas and brains.

2. In 2009 print and outdoor
advertising grow stronger while
TV continues to die.
Analysts, brands and media agencies all say people move
money from traditional advertising to digital. Personally
I believe glossy magazines and outdoor locations close to
standing still environments (bus-stops, squares, subways
etc) will grow. These are locations where people cannot
leave.
Solutions however will be far more customized than today
and we’ll focus on fewer but better placements.

3. Communication
Capitalism is born in
We’ll see more and more brands moving from the strategy of
putting it all on one card to campaign experimentation.
More brands than ever will in 2009 dare to loose control
of their communication and try multiple campaigns beside
each other. The ones that deliver on target will be feeded
more money, the ones that doesn’t deliver are killed and
new ones are born. Exactly like you would treat your stock
portfolio - don’t put everything on one card.
In 2008 I started to call this strategy Communication
Capitalism and it’s time for you to do that too cause in
2009 it’ll kick off.

4. Online advertising suffers from
lack of competence and will slow
down in 2009 for the first time in
Lots of brands have now tried different strategies for online advertising. While doing so
they’ve gotten better at measuring their campaigns and the results doesn’t
meet expectations. Flash campaigns with full screen video doesn’t give shit. Banners keep on
loosing click rate. RSS feeds are great but how do you place advertising that people see
inside it? Facebook advertising didn’t deliver. Adwords is kinda of nice but where’s the
branding?
On top of this the media companies doesn’t know jack shit about what’s going on.
The digital agencies produce fantastic campaigns but there’s not enough senior employees to
choose communication over cool technologies.
Over at the brand side the competence on digital media is in generally low and the marketing
directors has to choose a communication partner. Today that partner is the traditional
advertising agency mostly because of their senior employees. The problem here is that they
don’t understand the digital medium - and that’s a disaster for the brands and their
communication efforts.
To sum of the problem.
▪
There’s just not enough senior people in the world that really understand how to combine
traditional and digital communication.
▪
This means agencies, brands and media advisors continue to suggest the wrong things.
Result: Brands will pull out of online activities due to it.

5. SEO / SEM freelancers
organize themselves
If you’re looking for people that truly understands SEO/
SEM marketing you choice shouldn’t be a media agency or
any other company for that sake. Most people out there
that truly understands SEO/SEM are individuals or very
small companies. The problem however for big brands is
that these individuals or companies cannot cater for their
needs, their basically too small.
In order for SEO/SEM to kick off we really need to see
some sort of network that can bring all these great brains
together but still let them run their own companies. Media
companies are all about taking over everything. These SEO/
SEM newcomers are all about networking and sharing so
sooner or later something like this should come.

6. Apple launches the iPhone Pro and
starts selling iPhone and rate plans in
iTunes.
After winning the hearts of millions around the world it’s time for
Apple to launch the second generation iPhones and I believe it’ll be
a Pro version of the iPhone. We’ll see better memory capacity, more
space, better keyboard, maybe even a bigger flip out screen of some
kind.
On top of this they’ll use the magic bullet gained by cooperating
with different operators in every country world wide. They’ve more or
less gotten them all to pay for the iTunes implementation and now the
exclusive deals are starting to run out. Haha says Apple as they will
start selling iPhones in computer shops and sell the rate plans
online.
(Rumors say that Apple will launch the iPhone Nano but I just thought
it was boring to go with that one)
(Update: While I was writing this part, rumors started to spread
about an iPhone Pro as well)

7. Facebook Connect and Google
Friend Connect continue to grow but
Friendfeed Friends might be the
During the later part of 2008 we’ve seen how Facebook and
Google has moved their positions forward to grab a larger
part of the social networking cake.
In the background however lurks Friendfeed. It’s quickly
growing and the people that use Facebook Connect of Google
Friend Connect would probably welcome a social connector
from someone else than the big ones and use that one more.
Friendfeed could and will be that third party.
Why not call it Friendfeed Friends?

8. Branding is being
reevaluated in 2009
Digital communication is totally revamping the landscape of
telling people about your brand. The base of brand strategies will
remain the same but the tactical part of it - treatment of
logotypes, typefaces, colors, graphical guidelines and who
officially represent a brand will change.
In 2009 we’ll se more brand than ever that let their corporate
guidelines loose and start experimenting. As more and more brand
activities get digitized brands will learn that it’s not about the
graphical guidelines but instead about keeping the conversation
alive.
In 2009 branding becomes being a personality and personalities
change constantly but their heart and spine stay the same. You
might say that this is not something new but until now most brands
believe their brand manual is the guide to heaven when it’s
actually the guide to hell. In 2009 this old fashioned way of
communicating your brand will change.

9. Mashups grow up and
conquer the corporate world.
This year we’ve seen how a lot of sites turned into mashups.
A mashup is about creating one place where visitors can view content
from sources like YouTube, Flickr, Del.icio.us, Twitter, Facebook and
much more.
Until now most of the good mashup sites has been personal websites or
web 2.0 companies. In 2009 we’ll see how large brands like Nike,
Diesel, adidas, Apple, Coca Cola, Disney, GM, Puma, Ikea, Samsung,
Absolut and more will turn their websites into mashups.
All kind of brands will see the benefit of not hosting your videos
inhouse but instead creating channels on multimple social video
platforms. Your images will be better spread if placed on Flickr.
That corporate blog of yours works better if it’s running on
Wordpress and mashed into your and your partners websites.
Sites like Yahoo Pipes and Tarpipe will do wonders for the social
spread and suddenly you find your brand site being turned into a true
web 2.0 entity.

Who is Johan Ronnestam
Innovative consultant, digital communication expert and advertising man
from Stockholm, Sweden. I’m a 37 year old creative director &
entrepreneur who loves to solve communication problems with ideas,
creativity and innovation.
Read more on: http://www.ronnestam.com/about/