We’ve been speaking to a number of big names this week and all of them are keen to be at the show but they have something else in common – budgets are restricted or non-existent in 2009.
On the one hand it’s understandable – these are the toughest times in living memory (although a few of us, somewhat more stricken in years, can recall a couple of previous recessions) and yet on the other it’s odd – surely the time to advertise and promote sales is when they are hardest to achieve?
And yet that seems not to be the view of the financial people – we often hear that it would be “inappropriate” to spend money on sales promotion when workers are being laid off or being put on reduced shifts.
Why should this be? If I was one of those workers being laid off due to excessive stock held of unsold product, I would want the company to make every effort to sell them – surely this would be the fastest route to getting my job back?
As a society we accept and live with the economic model of continuous growth being required as a sign of a healthy economy yet when that growth stalls we seem almost paralysed, the tap is either on or off.
We’ve heard the argument advanced – “There’s no business out there so why advertise?” – we see this as a crazy oversimplification.
There is business out there – less of it sure, and at worse terms without a doubt, but it’s there and the only way to grow your business in such circumstances is to take market share away from your competitors.
Will you be able to do this by sacking the sales force and freezing the show and ad budgets?
Biased we may be but somehow we doubt it, the only people that believe in the phrase “these products sell themselves” are people who no experience of selling.