The year ahead for ... creativity.(economic condition of advertising agencies)

Ewan Paterson wonders whether the economic backdrop will play a major role in ensuring that 2009 is a vintage year for creative ideas.

Do we have creative years and non-creative years? One's gut instinct would say yes. And evidence would support this. Take 1504, for example Leonardo Da Vinci was painting the Mona Lisa, while Michelangelo's David was taking shape.

And in the motion picture world there was 1974, the year of The Godfather Part II, Chinatown, The Conversation, Lenny and Towering Inferno.

Look up 1639 in any history of art book and you'll find nothing better than Rubens' The Three Graces. Good, but third division at best relative to the masterpieces of 1504. And in cinema, 2007 was the equivalent of art's 1639.

In our humble world of advertising, the same is true. 2005 gave us the interactively brilliant, cricket-watching friend 'The Boony' from Australia for Victoria Beer, the iPod Nano, Sony 'balls', the Harvey Nichols sale campaign featuring calendar pages and Sure deodorant's 'stunt city'. While there's also been a fair few years when I haven't bothered to keep the D&AD Annual.

So what are the factors at play? What it is it that gives rise to a year of great creativity? Well, the economic backdrop plays a role.

In the Renaissance Art example, affluent times certainly helped produce great works of art as the prosperous families passed on their wealth in the form of sponsorship for the artists of the day. And the creatively strong year, for us advertisers, of 2005 was clearly during a period of economic prosperity.