AND YOU CAN CUT THEM AS SAVAGELY AS YOU LIKE – 3 OBSERVATIONS I was for a number of years on the board of a government trading enterprise (GTE) which was on a number of occasions instructed to cut marketing costs. The rational was that the government needed to rein in spending. On each occasion […]

AND YOU CAN CUT THEM AS SAVAGELY AS YOU LIKE – 3 OBSERVATIONS I was for a number of years on the board of a government trading enterprise (GTE) which was on a number of occasions instructed to cut marketing costs. The rational was that the government needed to rein in spending. On each occasion the required cut was a fixed percentage applied to all agencies. The instruction did not seem to take into account the facts that – the agency generated a profit for government, all expenditure was related to selling the product that drove profits, the decline in spending would lead to a decline in profits and the fact that the was a GTE. A dumb instruction! Even dumber than the instruction however was the response. The response was to gut the said percentage across the board. In other words – if we were instructed to reduce spending…