Listening to Radio 5 while taking my morning shower, the news is full of doom and gloom: it’s the most depressing day of the year apparently. They even called it ‘Blue Monday’ which, as those who know me will be aware, has very different connotations for me personally! For sure, trading conditions are proving tricky as the masses finally take the hit from helter-skelter consumer spending, corporate greed and the reckless mayhem caused by the sheer unadulterated madness of the financial sector.

But, what did we expect? An economy based on ludicrous property prices and access to unparalleled (plastic) wealth to continue for an eternity? We have a barely elected government floundering under its own self-created identity crisis, and totally irrelevant opposition parties that really are just wasting everyone’s time including their own.  Last straw was the sight of Gordon Brown crawling up Branson’s backside over the weekend without the wit to notice that it was all part of a corporate PR plot so he can get his grubby fingers on Northern Rock.

A long-overdue rain check is in process and the weak and frail will ultimately fail. Perhaps this is no bad thing, and just maybe it will have a positive effect on the future attitudes and offerings of businesses the world over. The consumer is no longer the willing sucker at the end of a retail gravy train, and is no longer prepared to shell out exorbitant prices for sub-standard product. In the wonderful words of Kevin Roberts, “companies no longer aspire to being irreplaceable, they have to become irresistible”. It is all about an emotional response, trust and desire. Doing business is increasingly more akin to relationships: don’t work at it and it will collapse.  Feel the love and drive the passion.

Despite the political abyss into which we are being dragged, the charmless corporate business landscape and the prevalence of talentless Z-list celebrities, the world and, in particular, Britain is a wonderful place. A gradual devolution of centralised political and corporate power is taking place on the ground with entrepreneurs and creatives inspiring a new attitude, a new energy based on independence, innovation and technology. I feel it every day in my dealings with the SME world who refuse to kowtow to the conventional wisdoms of government, banks and a moaning culture fuelled by a mass media bored with even its own existence.

The internet has levelled the playing fields and a sassier consumer is responding. Ditch the grey- suited conventions and use the New Year as a springboard for realising ambitions, living dreams and embracing the underground creative culture bubbling on our streets. A taxi driver recently got more than he bargained for when telling me that their are no decent bands anymore and that youth culture was dead. Oh dear. He had obviously not heard of Ladytron, The National, Soho Dolls, Foals, Puressence, Futon (mega), Shiny Toy Guns or Client to name but a few of my personal faves. Creatively things have never been better either - check out Plastique, Wonderland or Object magazines, let alone the talent on display in Creative Review, Grafik, .Net and Dazed & Confused.  Inspirational stuff all round.

So, perhaps Blue Monday is an appropriate title for today - after all as it was written by New Order which is what Impress is about.

While Impress works with a huge variety of businesses, many of our clients represent the bread and butter of the economy – the noble small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The more aspirational owners and marketers within these businesses (and these are our favourite clients!) are often to be heard musing on how they can be the Mercedes, Apple or Prada of their industry – and quite rightly too. These businesses have built their brands to such an extent that their very names conjure up instant perceptions, respectively, of reliability, innovation and style.

But while there IS plenty to be learned from these big hitters, there is also a great deal that larger organisations could learn from some smaller businesses. I have worked with and for a real variety of businesses – from a five person start-up to a multi-billion dollar corporation, and the following points consistently hold true.

Firstly, when it comes to marketing, the smaller the budget, the more ingenuity is needed to make it work. A marketing budget should be anything between three and ten percent of a company’s turnover – but when that turnover is in five or six figures, there is little room for error in marketing.  The best SMEs use their budgets only where they can see significant effects on the bottom line. They advertise to create footfall for specific sales, events and exhibitions. They use PR to deliver brand messages to a clearly defined audience. They put in place pay-per-click campaigns to drive closely targeted prospects to their websites. All this drives sales – and grows the business.

Secondly, with a limited budget, you need an agency or agencies who really deliver. SMEs do not want to pay hordes of agency personnel to sit around conceptualising, beard rubbing and, God forbid, blue sky thinking. They want an agency who instantly understand their business, and simply deliver great marketing. The question is, do bigger brands always make their agencies follow the same discipline?

Thirdly, for SMEs, knowledge of the business is not dispersed over departments, divisions and even continents – it is often held in the head of one individual. While large corporations struggle to implement effective Knowledge Management Systems to speed up labouring decision-making processes, smaller businesses can already have reacted to a change in the environment, effected a change, marketed it and be selling it to the corporation’s customers! And, while larger businesses sometimes need to pay consultants to answer the most fundamental of marketing questions: “who are my customers?”, smaller businesses know who their customers are – they have met them, they know what they want, and in Impress’ case, they are probably going for a drink with them later.

So finally to the most important aspect of a business – its people. While individual incompetence can be disguised in a poorly managed larger organisation, in SMEs there is nowhere to hide. While everyone has a crucial role to play in the success of the business, any individual failings can be disastrous for the business as a whole. Smaller companies can only succeed buy recruiting only the most excellent and driven people – and larger businesses should do the same – but this for any business is probably the biggest challenge of all.