As 2008 blinks its eyes, stretches and begins to find its feet, we reflect on a strange and often eventful time in what was the year 2007.

Our newsletter is not the place to discuss the credit crunch or Northern Rock and to be frank enough has already been written about this and will continue to be. Does it really add so much to the sum of human knowledge to reveal that in the past three months the r-word was used in almost 2,000 broadsheet articles in the UK, compared with just 850 times in the previous quarter?

However, more important is; music, television, games, movies, fashion: we now devour our pop culture the same way we enjoy chocolate and chips—in conveniently packaged bite-size nuggets made to be munched easily with increased frequency and maximum speed. Today, media snacking is a way of life. In the morning, we check news and tap out emails on our Blackberrys. At work, we graze allday on social networking sites and blogs. Back home, the HDTV is for 10-course feasting - say, an entire season of 24 or Heroes. In between are the morsels that fill those ‘whenever’ minutes, as your mobile phone operator calls them: a 90-second game on your Nintendo DS Lite, a 60-second webisode on your mobile, a three-minute podcast on your iPod.

Like Homer Simpson at the all-you-can-eat seafood buffet, we are capable of devouring whatever is in front of us—down to the plastic crustaceans—and still go fishing for YouTube clips at 3 am.

This has been a year of marketing battles, flashy new product launches and an avowedly unflashy new Prime Minister. In 2007, we have witnessed some huge highs and nadir-scraping lows, while a number of pivotal events have wrought changes across many of marketing’s biggest sectors.

Significant events include the introduction of smoking bans in England and Wales, the first ever curbs on junk food ads to kids and the resignation of Prime Minister Tony Blair, to be replaced by Gordon ‘Grey’ Brown. There was flooding on a biblical scale across parts of the UK, the launch of the iPhone and the rise of social networking sites. And let’s not forget a new management at ITV under Michael Grade, the re-emergence of food price inflation and the near-collapse of the global banking system. Much of which seems to be repeated in the early part of 2008.

So what did we learn in 2007?

With the advent of the social web has come more and more interaction between consumers online. Social networks, and user feedback sites, seen as slightly quirky a year ago are now normal everyday occurrences for the consumer.

Consumers have begun taking greater control of who talks to them and what they could say. And marketers tried valiantly to both abide by the rules consumers were setting up and, at the same time, go about the business of selling in much the same way they have for decades. Don't expect consumers' intolerance for irrelevant interruption of their daily lives with marketing messages to abate anytime soon. New technologies have given them the power to choose, and they're not likely to discard that ability anytime soon.

Social networking has provided the consumer with the power to feedback on services and products almost instantaneously, illustrated recently by Apple’s student group on Facebook where they actively engage with this hard to reach group with discounts, product announcements and an opportunity to feedback product issues. One company that has recently got it wrong is Wal-Mart they set up a similar group but didn’t connect with the student audience, and quickly had to remove the group from Facebook following negative feedback. Blogs are another way that consumers can provide instant feedback to companies either positively or negatively.

Signposts we have passed

During the past year, we've seen some traditional messaging channels lose their effectiveness while some new technologies have piqued marketers' interests. Online marketing has focused on two areas: acquisition of potential customers and retention of valuable ones. With many clients still experiencing the problems of integrating legacy systems into the world of online, however this should not be seen as a reason not to start the process.

We all know it can cost as much as five times more to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. And yet, a tremendous percentage of marketing budgets continue to be spent on acquisition. Why? Well for starters, getting new customers is easier than keeping those you already have if you're willing to ignore costs. PCD continue to provide touchpoint audits to our clients in order to maximise this pool of customers, and can help from single product audits to comprehensive review of all communications including statutory.

Online acquisition efforts have focused primarily on ads and the current 600-pound gorilla on the Internet – search. Email advertising as an acquisition channel has been, and will continue to be, a challenge, with response and open rates still falling.