Just before Christmas I had the idea for a series of guest blog posts.

I had been reading so many articles about online communications, digital media, social media and social networking predictions that have a US centric focus. So I thought, why not get some of the smartest people I know in Ireland and the UK who have a opinion in this area to join in a conversation about their thoughts on predictions for 2009?

I am delighted therefore to bring you the first guest blog post in the series. I am especially thankful to all the guest bloggers who I know have very busy schedules. I do hope you enjoy their personal perspectives, insights and predictions.

The first guest blog post by Mark Congiusta.

People in our industry overestimate what you can do in one year and underestimate what you can do in ten years. Marc Benioff, Chairman &CEO of Salesforce.com

Making predictions about the future of digital media is often times an exercise in futility… for most people.

Lucky for you I have the uncanny ability to see far into the future and divine secrets shrouded by the ephemeral caprices of fate. So without further ado, here are 12 100% guaranteed accurate facts about the progress of online technology that will take place in Ireland in 2009:

January

The Lead Story: Old adage about “a million monkeys at a million typewriters” producing a classic work of literature proven true when Twitter users unintentionally collaborate to recreate Joyce’s Ulysses. Novel declared still unreadable.

The Back Story: Twitter is currently one of the fastest growing social networks on the planet (as well as being a personal favourite). Its impact on personal communication is still relatively nascent as it continues to augment such legacy platforms as e-mail, instant messaging, and even search. But there is also tremendous opportunity for businesses and brands in this space that in most cases has yet to be effectively leveraged.

Dell and Zappos are 2 companies that have been quite successful early adopters of the Twitter platform, using it to improve customer service by becoming active listeners and monitoring online conversations.

Here in Ireland where Twitter usage has yet to achieve mass penetration, there is still great potential for businesses looking to tap into a highly wired and networked group of social media influencers. I think that the coming year will see an increasing number of Irish brands test the waters of Twitter as they search for more effective ways of engaging their customer bases at the wellspring of conversation.

February

The Lead Story: 2009 officially declared “The Year of the Mobile”. Years 2001-2008 (inclusive) designations as “The Year of the Mobile” reclassified as “honest miscalculations”.

The Back Story: With a supersaturated mobile device penetration rate of over 120% here in Ireland, it makes absolutely no sense as to why customer engagement in the mobile channel has yet to assert itself as A – if not THE – primary driver of B2C communication in-market. While in past years a prevalence of legacy handsets and limited access to mobile Internet services might have explained this dichotomy between opportunity and access, we should no longer use that crutch to explain away our failings in mobile customer engagement.

The problem, I think, looks us back in the mirror every morning. Instead of trying to figure out ways that the mobile channel can make our customers more useful to our marketing efforts, we should rather be trying to develop ways of building mobile inroads through the provision of utility and services that make brand sponsored experiences indispensable to customers’ daily lives.

March

The Lead Story: Future of Web Apps conference comes to Dublin upgrading Ireland from “digital backwater” designation to “digital stopover” status.

The Back Story: Geographically Ireland is in a tricky but opportunistic spot. Sandwiched between 2 historically influential cultures, to our far left and immediate right, the Irish have nevertheless managed to punch above their weight and achieve recognition on the global stage disproportionate to the size of their population. We need to make sure that this trend continues in the coming years as it relates to the Irish influence on global digital thought and policy making.

Hosting thought leading conferences such as the FOWA is a great way to do this. We need to make sure that this event is mobbed (in a good way!) with interested and thoughtful participants. We need to continue to host and build gatherings with international gravitas that force people to re-frame their opinions of the tech community in Ireland within a global context.

Government and private enterprises can, and should, partner in this area to create a favourable atmosphere where Ireland can be considered as a viable global destination for any event of this stature.

April

The Lead Story: Philip Macartney (Sales Director Bebo Ireland) beats Damien Mulley (award winning Irish blogger) to death with a loaf of Pat the Baker bread.

The Back Story: As amusing a flame war as the online debate surrounding the Pat the Baker Bebo campaign was, the key takeaway to the back and forth for me was the still pitiful state of online metrics when it comes to analysing the efficacy of digital advertising in general and social engagement in particular. You can argue about strict tactical ROI numbers all day but that is not representative of the true value that digital media presents for both consumers and brands.

I take the fact that I need both hands and a foot to count the number of clients that have come to me unsolicited to ask about this campaign as proof that this type of engagement mechanic hits a nerve. Now I’m not here to argue the facts of the campaign or its efficacy, I’m simply pointing out that brand marketing managers know that things of this nature have meaning to consumers, even if they can’t really put their finger on what that value is. It is our responsibility as their guides through the online jungle to give them a sense of how social interactivity quantifies in relation to their overall marketing spend.

Unfortunately, that is easier said than done. What we need is an accurate, comprehensive and robust system for measuring these values and apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so.

May

The Lead Story: Irish economy collapses. Google posts record profits based on increased Adwords competition for phrases “cooking with shoe leather”, “housewarming gifts for a home foreclosure” and “AIB €87 million personal loans”.

The Back Story: For most marketers, search is a nebulous and paralysing concept. Most people in our profession are happy to hand this off to a hopefully competent 3rd party to manage, devoid of all but the most tenuous connection to the rest of the digital marketing spend. Paid search (SEM) and natural search (SEO) are, in many cases, erroneously treated as tactical rather than strategic decisions.

The reality for anyone operating under those assumptions is that search is an integral part of the average Irish web surfers behaviour and needs to be considered holistically and not as an isolated activity. The current economic climate only makes your brands search relevance all the more important.

June

The Lead Story: Facebook moves international headquarters to Dublin. Still no one accepts any of Michael Flatley’s friend requests.

The Back Story: Yet another big win for the Irish digital business community as Facebook announces its choice of Dublin as the seat of its EMEA operation. While this is further vindication of the Irish corporate tax policy we need to leverage this success to further promote digital literacy and foster digital talent among the younger demographics who will one day drive the growth of this industry indigenously.

When you read that “almost a third of primary school students in classes surveyed were computer illiterate to the extent that they were incapable of connecting to the Internet or of printing a document" you have to question the value of an expanding corporate digital presence if the social benefits do not find it’s way down to the people who need it most and will have the greatest impact on future market growth.

I will now climb down off my high horse.

July

The Lead Story: Iarnrod Eireann announce free WiFi for all commuters. People now able to use the Internet while on the way to work to try and figure out what those WKD ads with the chickens and turkeys mean.

The Back Story: I’m actually not as bearish on broadband penetration here in Ireland as many people are. I’m not saying I’m thrilled with the download speeds I get with my residential DSL connection, but when you take into account the huge infrastructure investments associated with the wiring of a whole country for broadband access, you’ve got to take the good with the bad.

Ireland has one of the fastest broadband growth rates in all of Europe. Ireland has better WiFi coverage per capita than almost anywhere else on earth. Fixed broadband penetration continues to grow as does mobile and there are private initiatives in the works both daring and visionary in scope that may be capable of picking up a certain amount of bureaucratic slack. All in all, it could be worse.

My intention is not to excuse those who pay lip service to the commitments required to bring the whole of Ireland into the digital age. We can, should and must do better to drive broadband growth. I also wonder where the tipping point is between continuous business acquisition and infrastructure overload. All I’m saying is, irrespective of the current economic conditions, any reduction in investment in this area will have long term negative consequences so sustained progress, however incremental, is imperative.

August

The Lead Story: It rains. A lot.

The Back Story: Not every month holds great things in store for the Irish digital community. 31 straight days of rain tends to fog up the crystal ball.

September

The Lead Story: Media companies expand internal training programs to include “99 Ways to Serve a McDonald’s Hamburger” and “From Wagon Wheel Makers to Typewriter Repairmen: A History of Employment Obsolescence”.

The Back Story: If you work in media and can look around your office without seeing a single person devoted solely to the pursuit of digital media strategies and executions my advice to you is: start polishing up your CV because you are going to be out of a job soon. Media is rapidly becoming the most commoditised link in the marketing food chain, and the capabilities of digital networks are driving that transformation.

It is only a matter of time before Google gives anyone with enough free time and a few Euros in their pocket the ability to create ad hoc media plans of their own across multiple channels. What do media companies offer then?

Here’s a thought: develop insightful media strategies that involve more than display advertising spend and seek to do nothing more than justify budgets. If I see one more media plan with the same five Irish web sites on them I will start cracking skulls. If Irish media wants to continue to operate under a digital mass production mindset, then that’s how they’ll be treated. Work like that goes to the lowest bidder and becomes geographically transient.

October

The Lead Story: Brian Cowen sex tape leaked on YouTube. Gets total of 2 views, 0 stars, 1 comment: “Ewwww”.

The Back Story: Online video will continue to be a big driver of online traffic in 2009 both locally and globally. The reality is that people are mostly past the stage of kick-in-the-groin LOL videos. Users crave professional video content, within contextually relevant presentation.

The days of posting your latest TV commercial online are well over and in fact may actually hurt your company’s image with consumers if they take you to be a media dinosaur incapable of demonstrating any digital vision beyond spreading the same tired content around multiple channels.

TV3 saw this opening in the Irish market and decided to fill it in a big way. Their overall intention was not to just drive broadcast viewer-ship but also to allow their user base to make decisions about when and where they wanted to consume content. People no longer interact with media on predefined time schedules. If you are not giving your customers compelling content on their terms they will find someone who will. The added benefit from a marketing perspective is that this creates a whole host of new potential advertising products beyond the 30-second ad that is win/win for both the viewer and advertiser.

November

The Lead Story: Golden Spiders creates infinite feedback loop causing rift in the space/time continuum by awarding www.goldenspiders.ie the best in show Grand Prix.

The Back Story: What Ireland really needs is a big international success coming from the heart of the indigenous digital community to put us on the map. While anyone can see the steady and pronounced growth in the quality of the digital marketing initiatives coming out of Ireland we need a few internationally qualified wins in order to really put us on the map. When you look at other countries of relatively comparable size  (i.e. New Zealand, the Netherlands, Sweden) and check that against their impact on the world digital stage, you can chart the benchmark that we should be aiming for.

Of course, the corollary of this is the existence of a broad client base prepared to support the type of digital spends usually required to make work like this possible. True, social media does offer opportunities on a sliding monetary scale, but prolonged success will require dedicated marketing budgets more inline with our international counterparts. I do see progress being made in this area but it needs to happen at an accelerated pace.

December

The Lead Story: Krishna De of BizGrowthNews.com shocks absolutely no one by not inviting Mark Congiusta back for annual “State of Digital Media in Ireland” guest blogger event.

The Back Story: I am actually very excited about the future of digital media and advertising for the next 12 months here in Ireland. I know that the conventional wisdom would have you bury your head in the sand and ignore everything but the most basic survival tactics but the coming trials represent opportunity as much as tribulation.

This is not a business for the faint of heart and you wouldn’t be in it if you didn’t have a bit of the thrill-seeker in your bones. So I say grab a hold of something, point the nose into the wind and get ready for an exciting ride in 2009.

ABOUT THE GUEST BLOGGER

You can connect with Mark Congiusta on Twitter @interactivemark – Mark Head of Interactive at Irish International BBDO/Proximity and was engaged in working with Irish broadcasting company TV3.ie to launch their new website in 2008.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

If you missed the Golden Spiders 2008, you can see highlights of the awards HERE.

Wondering how I created the photo of Mark and watermarked it? I did it with the wonderful new version of Windows Live Writer which I use to draft all my articles off line for the variety of blogs I author (across both Typepad.com and Wordpress.org platforms)

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