With the New Year barely off the starting blocks, the gloom-mongers are hard at work.

Marketers are working longer hours, we’re told, because of increasing client pressure, a point taken further by Seth Godin in his workaholic post. Data protection issues loom even larger following various highly disturbing public sector breaches and a red-faced Jeremy Clarkson, who proved that even the serious business of data security had its funny side.And companies will have to shape up and deliver on those promises if green marketing isn’t to end up being merely the bandwagon of all bandwagons. Over it all hangs the small but darkening spectre of US recession fears.

At Eclipse we’re a ‘glass half full’ agency and refuse to be downhearted by any of this. Instead of wasting time worrying, we’ll be helping our people work more effectively for clients and have a life, looking at our own data security procedures, and making sure we live our green credentials, not just talk about them. As for economic jitters from across the Atlantic, we’re with those who see the prospect of a global downturn as another opportunity - though we wouldn’t go as far as some, calling it a blessing in disguise.

Honda (UK) has started off the New Year by launching a new brand campaign to highlight its green engineering innovations - developing products which will have less impact on the environment.

They’re using a number of clever creative puzzles in the print and outdoor activity to demonstrate Honda’s passion for solving problems as well as develop a microsite called problem playground which describes the technology behind the engineering.

by Chris Thorneycroft-Smith, Associate Director, Eclipse Marketing

You don’t need me to tell you how fast the world of marketing is changing.

Classic mass marketing techniques that we’ve all known and relied on for decades, like exhibitions and advertising, are passé. In their place technology has given us some highly developed new tools. Databases and computerised systems and processes enable us to take a more targeted approach, gathering much more specific information about markets and customers.

With consumers becoming more sceptical of traditional marketing, we have to come up with even smarter ways of communicating with them. 

So, the old ways of marketing are dead. Long live the new ways. The market is changing and companies must change the way they approach customers and prospects.