With the uncertainties of 2009 but a turkey and a midnight kiss away, we at Boards eschewed the traditional but messy business of trawling through chicken entrails and tea leaves to divine what the next 12 months may have in store. Instead, we turned to three top future-minded individuals from within the industry and beyond to gain insight on how social, cultural and technological changes are changing the way we interact with brands, and how agencies should respond in 2009.

We spoke to Rishad Tobaccowala, chief innovation officer at Publicis-owned Denuo, which advises agencies on expanding creativity from ideation into media, production and execution; Faris Yakob, formerly of brand consultancy Naked Communications and now chief technology strategist at McCann Erickson, New York; and David Pescovitz, co-editor of influential blog BoingBoing.com and research director at the Institute For The Future, which provides future forecasting for organizations and companies under the motto, "Foresight into insight into action."

With a recession at hand, spending for digital threatening to overtake TV, and new media and technology platforms changing consumer interactions with brands, Yakob's explanation of his role neatly sums up the task that the industry's thought-leaders are currently faced with: "I'm trying to work out what the role for an advertising agency is in a digital world and how to best help clients embrace emerging platforms in a way that makes sense for them."

Here are more sage words and thoughts on what's in store in the near future.

BOARDS: What do all of you see as the biggest challenges in terms of speaking to consumers in 2009?

DAVID PESCOVITZ: I've been interested in what we call the maker mindset, this resurgence of do-it-yourself culture surrounding tech and people who appreciate the process of either making stuff from scratch or transforming something they've purchased into something more personal. It's a quest for authenticity. We spend so much time in these virtual, mediated worlds, and people want to get their hands dirty. So I hope what you'll see is marketers start to understand that and engage with these lead users who are altering their technology and products in different ways; to have a conversation and learn from one another rather than tossing out lawsuits.

FARIS YAKOB: There are a couple of things: there's a macro-level shift to participatory culture that's been analyzed for some time now. People who grew up in the passive media culture have a different relationship to ideas, so you need to treat people differently. The mainstream, passive adoptive TV viewing audience doesn't multitask; they watch quite a lot of programming and it's unlikely that their behavior will change much. The closest they will get to interacting with content and ideas will be time- and place-shifting, using DVRs and Walkmans. So I think what is going to happen this year will be the collapse of the social and non-social media worlds, or what I call the socializing of other media.

[Internet guru] Clay Shirky talks about the nature of "solidarity goods", or goods that increase in value the more people consume them. TV shows were solidarity goods by virtue of limited bandwidth so everyone saw the same programming. People are now trying to find ways to rebuild communities around programming. So the guys at Eureka and The Hills have Twitter backchannels running when the programs are on, so people can talk to each other.

PESCOVITZ: It's a really interesting time because previously there's been this wall, necessarily so, between the editorial side and media, but with the rise of underground media to become mass media in the form of blogs and other kinds of systems, there's an opportunity for marketers to join in the conversation between authors and readers in an open and transparent way. To be honest, I have a great time talking to ad agencies and marketers and companies about ways to connect with our audience and our community.

BOARDS: What about the premise of, say, Honeyshed? Can the mall experience be translated online?

PESCOVITZ: I think this distinction between the virtual and the real, this concept of cyberspace, is played out. [William] Gibson coined it in 1984, and this idea of a place you go to through your desk is done. Cyberspace is becoming - through mobile technology and the geoweb - an overlay on top of our existing reality.

YAKOB: I like to call that 'geotility'; being useful for where you are. The role of brands in this space is not defined yet, and the fear is that it becomes spam. The natural fear [about] brands is that when new territories like Second Life appear, they stick their branding on there, like that's the only way we can communicate. If you start slapping logos in my augmented reality field of vision, I will block you from my access. We can't be friends.

RISHAD TOBACCOWALA: The discussion of what is analogue and digital, what is real and what is cyberspace... interestingly, some of the most successful examples make those a harmonious whole. Think about Nintendo Wii. People say, "Isn't that amazing?" And I say, it's [just like] Guitar Hero, but the whole platform is Guitar Hero. Then think to a certain extent about meet ups [where groups with joint interests who meet online get together in the real world]. Meet ups are very popular with people who actually spend a lot of time in cyberspace, but the idea is that it tends to be an extension of, or an enhancement of that [online interaction]. It's not just what you can do in the real world transferred to the cyberworld.

PESCOVITZ: I agree with you. Second Life was an interesting reminder that early on, the Internet was a tool for communication and then it became about content in the information revolution. But now we see the pendulum swinging back again where people are realizing it's about communication and that humans are the most important nodes on the network.