champagne

To the traditional President's New Year reception at the Institute of  Practitioners in Advertising headquarters in London's  Belgrave  Square.  The champagne flowed as if there  was no recession and there was no shortage of  canapes.  At  least standards  are  being maintained in some sections of  the media jungle in these "challenging" times .

Out-going president Moray MacLellan  of  M&C Saatchi in his uplifting address maintained a running gag  -  words like "downturn" and even "good times" were not  articulated.  Instead  placards were  held up  silently.

 MacLennan was honest enough however to admit that he  had  been one of  those who believed  that the UK would avoid a deep recession by a  whisker.

This  very week the IPA admitted  that the UK advertising market would not be a place for "the faint hearted" this year. For the first time since the IPA's quarterly Bellwether report  was launched nine years ago annual marketing budgets  had been set lower  than a year ago.

For  good measure the IPA has also found separately that most in the advertising  were  ill-prepared to cope with advertising in the new world of social networks.

The champagne helped, of course,  but in many knots of  conversation  the  talk was  dominated by the effect of budgets slashed, work lost and jobs  disappeared.

Even at  the mighty  Financial Times journalists are facing the prospect of compulsory redundancies something that has not  happened since ..  well forever.

But what was really interesting were the people who were not at the IPA  do.  You would think newspaper  marketing directors would be there in mass to work the crowd. 

If they were there they were difficult to spot.

If  there is any lesson to be learnt from current events - no-one  can  stay isolated in their own little monastic trade cults any more - if they ever could.

Meanwhile cheers to one and all.

ends