With the economic climate and the travel industry left with budgeting and planning in these uncertain times it is important to think back to what the industry faced after 911. We quickly focused on consumer behavior and followed the anthropology of consumers online as they slowly recovered from the shock of the event. Print and broadcast advertising were cancelled and marketers looked to the web to help them through the rough waters.  Today we are in much the same situation. While there are multiple predictions that travel overall will be down by 8% in 2009, some sectors of the market are hurting much worse than others. Our advice to clients is to get aggressive and realize that if there is an 8% drop there will still remain a 92% marketplace. This means that you have to take market share away from competitors. That is our goal with our clients and it is what will set the stage for a robust comback in 2010. While I have been a branding professional for many years, I have to predict that most of the online marketing and advertising this year will probably be focused on direct response and informational call to action strategy. It is a year when online marketing will be more important than ever, and in being able to measure the results so accurately, it should become an even bigger portion of the total marketing budget for many companies. While nobody knows how bad it will get, or when the recovery will begin, our approach is to throw out the marketing plan used last year and start over with a fresh approach. It's all about the bottom line and getting more than your share of the market this year.

Till next time.

Leah