When I first started out in marketing, about 8 years ago I worked for one of the biggest marketing communications (advertising) agencies in Belfast. There is no doubt it was a hub of creative talent with designers, artists and authors (yes our copy writers wrote books) combining together to come up with some pretty cool campaigns.

We spent our lunchtimes and usually working hours updating our clunky first edition ipods, playing tiger woods golf and trying to come up with fresh ideas that when story boarded would capture our clients imagination and get us working on some new exciting brief or other.

Older members of the team told stories of even more golden days in advertising when they would sit smoking cigars and drinking Jack Daniels at 11am in the morning as part of client brain storming sessions.  I'll always remember this old timer would take three heaped spoons of sugar along with 4 large spoonfuls of Nescafe about 10 times a day. The fuel of champions as they say. These guys would be flown on Concorde to events like the Monaco gran prix, all as little perks for buying huge amounts of advertising space.

In these days my clients varied from public sector mammoths to the automotive and retail but the common theme was they all had massive budgets which we would help them spend one way or another, usually on media such as TV, radio, Billboards, superlites and marketing literature. The same equation kind of worked with most clients. Sure some threw in a bit of ambient media but the staples always worked when we applied our creative execution.

Just 8 years ago the requests coming in for web or anything of a digital media were few and far between. The idea of pumping a few hundred K into a television campaign could be made at a progress meeting but investing in online marketing or web presence was still an afterthought for most, something tagged in at the end of a campaign.

It was obvious though that things were just about to change and those in the industry were going to have to embrace the internet in a big way if they were going to retain clients and continue to add value. This scared many but others were already spending their evenings learning new programs and re-skilling for the opportunities that were unfolding in a big way.

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About the Author, Joseph Cushley, Managing Director, Wolfmarks

Joseph (co-founder) specialises in marketing design and planning, strategic brand management and viral media.

A first class honours graduate in Marketing and a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Joseph has worked with many Europe’s top brands including Remus Uomo, Spar(UK), Renault, Almac and Douglas menswear.

In Northern Ireland he has also extensive public sector experience advising organisations such as Invest Northern Ireland, the Health Promotion Agency and Carecall Solutions.