Opinion: Perspective - Bringing in the new - what has 2005 got in store?(industry forecasts)

As my opening columnal gambit of the year, tradition holds that the crystal ball should be polished and a vision of the coming 12 months set before you.

So, for convention's sake: grey (as in lovely Moira grey) will become the new black (see the impending law on age discrimination); creativity will become the new media strategy (with so much media clutter and fragmentation around, cut-through will rely on brilliant creative ideas); media owners will become the new strategists; and there'll be a little bit more money to go around.

Thankfully, for everyone whose belt is now so tight that they're wearing their Christmas over-indulgence as a necklace, recovery is apparently upon us. Sod the fact that the high street had its worst Christmas for a decade, or that successive interest-rate rises, extortionate petrol prices and an uncertain housing market are finally curbing consumer spending; it's time to talk the ad market up.

But are clients really ready to shed their conservatism, embrace the new opportunities and rediscover the benefits of surprising, exciting, cut-through advertising? The recession has straightjacketed bold clients. Risk-taking has become anathema, creative innovation has taken a back seat to the tried, tested and mind-numbingly dull - as any peak-time ad break shows.

It's crucial now that as clients slowly start to loosen their budget binds, they rediscover a respect, and thirst, for great advertising.

It once was so. Peter Mead has a story about one of his old Abbott Mead Vickers clients. The agency had been struggling to come up with a new campaign for this particular client, and both client and agency thought they had finally cracked the brief. The commercial was shot and Mead duly unveiled the finished work to the hungry client.

It was, both parties finally admitted, a bit of a stinker. The great Mead, of course, being the gentleman professional he is, was fully prepared to shoulder the not-insignificant ...