Are you in flight, fight or freeze? Get fighting.
Henry Ford said: “Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.”
When the financial crisis was at its height, we started NoTosh. Our founder invested his final payslips in getting as much around the United Kingdom as he could in the year to come, getting his foot in the door wherever it would fit.
It paid off.
Investing in the development of what you do isn’t what you do after the crisis when your revenues, schedule or timetable might be more predictable. And you don’t let the endless binge-watching temptation of Netflix or excuse of home-working procrastination get in the way.
You do it today, amid the swirling chaos, so that you come out like a swan when the waves calm down.
And yet, in the height of the crisis, the advertising firms Ford refers to are seeing their income slashed by as much as $3bn. You might not care: who cares, after all, if some Madison Avenue fat cats don’t get their inflated paychecks.
But we all end up caring when we are then faced with awful advertising, and then even worse television produced on lower budgets. Twelve years ago, when Channel 4 gouged its budgets as it saw advertising revenues fall 20%, arguably it took a toll on quality programming for years. Twelve years on, the Channel faces a similar crisis.
When people are faced with crises, they fall back on fight, flight or freeze. Most people at the moment are on freeze. And organisations are just structures full of people. This is your chance to stand out by fighting.
Each of us must audit our whole organisation, looking at any aspect of it which is in a position to fight, rather than freeze. Who’s freezing when they could be fighting? Which department assumes it can’t work as well as it used to, because it’s trying to do things the old way in a new setting? Which bureaucrats are telling you that the technology you need to use can’t be used because it’s not ‘safe’? Are they fighting to provide as good a replacement, or freezing, and waiting for you to fight?
Just because of others freeze, doesn’t mean you should. And sometimes, that means you have to fight a bit with some ice cubes. Just remember that the heat of fighting the right battles will, eventually, melt the rationale of those who standstill.
The Evidence
- Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.
- Advertising budgets could take a $3B hit over coronavirus.
- U.K.’s Channel 4 to Unveil Cost-Cutting Measures this week as Ad revenue plummets.
This is the second episode in our latest email series, ‘The Provocation’. Join the list now to receive each episode directly to your inbox, before its published online: https://mailchi.mp/notosh.com/the-provocation
