2010 has been interesting for a number of political, sporting and other factors. However, Alchemis is focused on advertising and marketing and the Guardian article (July 12th) was a great sanity check as it mirrors our experiences over the first half of 2010.

The article focuses on the recent Bellwether report, published by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. It has found that one in five companies cut annual advertising spend between April and June. This compares with 15% that said spend was increased.

It was as recent as Quarter One when the report announced that more UK companies raised their marketing budgets than cut them for the first time in two-and-a-half years.

Advertising took a knock, although big events such as the World Cup meant the dip in this area was not as significant as it could have been. Sales promotion was hit very hard, with the report recording “the third fastest downgrade to spending on the sales promotion sector in the Bellwether survey’s history”

It is not all doom and gloom. For those in the digital sector spend went up, although at a very slow rate. Internet advertising continued to grow, with social media remaining a major focus. With ROI crucial, digital media’s measurability is very appealing to company bean counters.

Despite all of this, as a new business agency, we (and our clients) should latch onto Rory Sutherland’s (IPA President) comments – “Although this indicates a less optimistic picture than previously thought for this year, marketing spend is still set to increase.”

In fact, we are optimistic at Alchemis. As I mention above, our experiences have mirrored the positive first quarter followed by a slower second quarter with the digital sector remaining the growth area. We, and our clients, entered 2010 with a bang. New briefs were plentiful and outstanding proposals suddenly got the green light. We had a record quarter for clients converting business in all disciplines. The feeling from the market and our clients felt positive. Companies and marketing departments had stuck two fingers up to the recession and the combined efforts of Alchemis and our clients over the last hard 12 months were paying dividends.

Quarter Two did see a dip, although in fact, there were and are still lots of opportunities out there for small to medium sized agencies and results from the second quarter still smashed the figures from 2009. I am not an economist, but there is no doubt in my mind that the uncertainty both before and following the election was a factor. Those are out of the way now and the one thing that has not waned is the number of marketing professionals who have wanted to meet new agencies. We have set record numbers of meetings in May and June. If times are tough, you need to look at quality, cost-effective solutions. I’ve waxed lyrical about it before, but our client base of small to medium sized agencies offer exactly that and the market is really open to approaches from them.

There is still much uncertainty out there and whilst commentators will have their opinion, what happens next is anyone’s guess. However, we know that you will need to be prepared for both a down or upturn. If your current clients cut their budgets, you need to have irons in the fire with new business. If, as we all hope, the second quarter dip is short lived, you want to make sure that you have got the introductions out of the way before those budgets are released and allocated.

The Lib-Cons will be there for a while yet, Germany has beaten us again, but who knows what the rest of 2010 will bring? All I know is that everyone in agency land needs to be prepared for any eventuality.

So Labour has invited the public to ‘do it yourself’ and design their latest poster. You’ve probably seen the winning entry comparing David Cameron to the Ashes to Ashes character DCI Gene Hunt under the strapline ‘Don’t let him take Britain back to the 1980’s’.

The design was free, they received extensive PR coverage and even ticked the all important digital / social media box by videoing the winning designer Jacob Quagliozzi visiting the Saatchi and Saatchi offices which has been posted on YouTube.

Was this a genius strategy from the Labour party to bring user generated content in to the heart of their campaign? Or is this simply a gimmick?

Well, on first appearance this looks like it could be a good move with maximum exposure for minimum investment (something all marketers are striving to achieve). The Labour party isn’t the first brand to encourage their ‘customers’ to contribute to their marketing communications activity (the nation awaits with bated breath the results of Walkers next crisp flavour chosen by the public).

More importantly though, are the results any good? Jacob’s idea was judged the best of over a thousand submitted to the Labour Party but I’m not sure the guys at Saatchi and Saatchi need to be overly worried that Labour will be ditching their agency in favour of more work from the public on future campaigns.

The Tories didn’t seem too miffed either with Dave claiming to quite like the comparison and their own agency RSCG promptly brought out a version of the ad changing the strapline to ‘Fire up the Quattro, It’s time for change’.

This may have sparked a trend of using other parties posters as yesterday the Lib Dems launched their latest poster based on the Tories ‘tax bombshell’ campaign originally used by the Conservatives in the 1992 election.

So perhaps Labour’s DIY poster competition wasn’t the touch of genius it first appeared to be and we can put this particular battle down as a score draw with no clear winner. Unless of course Audi decide to use this renewed interest in their iconic Quattro brand with their own bit of retro marketing.

‘Vorsprung durch Technik’, as they used to say in adland.

P.S. for what it’s worth, I know where my vote will go – it’s got to be Spanish Chicken Paella surely?

I heard on BBC’s Breakfast News this morning that the Electoral Commission are using Facebook to generate some new business – in this case to encourage the 3.5 million people who are eligible to vote but are not registered to do so to get their backsides in gear.

Voter turn out amongst 18-24 year-olds is always poor, so anything that can be done to improve this must be good news.

With this in mind, it is one of the most useful campaigns I can think of in recent times and one which can genuinely be called “social marketing”, what with the potential benefit it could have on society as a whole – a truer reflection of how the people would like the country governed as the proportion of people having their say increases… unless of course these 3.5 million who have slipped through the net are complete morons or Nazis or something, in which case I’m sure it will be awful.

Of course, how successful it will be remains to be seen and the real challenge will be to actually get people off Facebook for 5 minutes and into the polling booths. So may I suggest to the Electoral Commission some sort of experiential marketing or sales promotion enticement to follow up – put your ballot in the box and you get the chance to live on an MP’s expense account for a year perhaps? I can already see the headlines now: “Counting still going on after three days – all parties stunned by highest turnout ever.”