I know year end reflections should typically be done like at the end of each year, but I think it’s never too late to do one early in the new year. I am going to share some pictures taken from my year end assignment trip, and probably talk a little on Marketing & Advertising in the new year – 2010!

Personally, 2009 was a year of a lot of ups and downs. The world saw the deaths of larger-than-life personalities, among them King of Pop Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Patrick Swayze, David Carradine, Edward Kennedy… The global economy on the road to recovery. Social media became a hot topic in 2009, think Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I took on an assignment with Hewlett Packard before the year ended, which took me to Guangzhou for the very first time. I extended the trip and visited Hong Kong and Macau. Macau was also my first. This explains why I hadn’t written anything since my last post. Here’s sharing some pictures from my trips.

Guangzhou

Hong Kong

Macau

So what would 2010 be like for Marketing & Advertising?

According to The Nielsen Company, advertisers are beginning to look at the media mix more holistically and to take seriously the increasing need for accountability beyond simple “click-through” metrics. They also are starting to embrace burgeoning social networks and consumer-generated media as advertising and branding platforms that can help them bring consumers closer to a product or brand. Here’s what they think will be the advertising trends for 2010.

1. Optimizing media convergence will become top priority: Continued corporate mandates and pressure to measure ROI will lead to a better understanding of media convergence and how various media work together. The ability to accurately measure activity and link online ads to offline purchasing behavior will be critical.

2. New models will emerge to take advantage of smartphones: Accurate mobile measurement will be required for advertisers to stay head of the snowballing growth of that media platform.

3. More cross-media ad campaigns will surface: The massive growth of online video games played and shared online is leading the way for more successful interactive and cross-media advertising campaigns to appear. Growth in the adoption of such advertising across screens and activities will increase.

4. Commercialization of social networking hubs will increase: Social media will provide a new sales channel for establishing product awareness and commercializing brands to better support traditional advertising or text-based ads.

5. More interesting and interactive online ads will appear. Increased use of more creative advertising and content models online such as video, attention-seeking page takeover ads and mechanisms for greater interactivity will drive the next era of web development.

Not forgetting, we’ll definitely see more companies getting into social media marketing as exchange of information outside of the brand space will increase, consumers are looking more into the value they get out of products and services, brands will try hard to keep up with consumers’ expectations, and I think as well that we will see growth in the mobile scene.

All in all, I’ve got a feeling that 2010 will be a good year with more companies hiring, and spending their marketing dollars! Cheers to a fantastic 2010!