It sounds eerily familiar:   “Most of the Asian ad industry is reeling. Budgets and revenues are down. People are demoralised. Clients often force agencies to churn out rubbish with the threat of the axe over their heads. The result? Creative quality is declining. There’s little respect for the value an agency can add.

“So what are we hoping for? That next year the clouds of recession will lift. Clients will start spending again, they’ll buy our recommendations, we’ll work shorter hours, get bigger bonuses and thing will return to ‘normal’. That’s hopelessly reactive. We are a proactive industry. We cannot simply blame external forces. We must ask the question - what can we do about it?”

Well, that was then. But I could write those exact words again now and no one would quibble. There aren’t many people running agencies today who were running them then, and I know that many people now in management feel a little like rabbits frozen in the headlights. Assailed by talk of cost-cutting, headcount, layoffs, pay cuts, budget reductions - and having no idea where to turn.

The danger of this is that we focus purely on the negative and we forget about the positive - the fact that we are a resilient and proactive industry, and that a successful future is down to us.Of course we need to deliver bottom lines, and we will have to take decisive and firm action to achieve what we’re asked to achieve. But we mustn’t slavishly focus only on this.

There are seven decisive tactics that agency leadership must adopt as we plan for, and experience, 2009.