As the evidence piled up, I recommended to G&Z that they pay us to test cutting their advertising budgets. They could start perpetual tests with us to see if reducing ad spending hurt their products’ sales. If it hadn’t after two years, they could cut their commercials nationally. If in later years our forerunner tests picked up a long-term downturn, they could boost advertising nationally back to the original levels before any harm was done.
For $5 million in testing, they might be able to save $50 million (or even $500 million) in advertising. (G&Z currently spends about $7 billion per year on advertising in total.)
This logic seemed unassailable to me. But my contacts at G&Z explained that no brand manager had ever gotten promoted by cutting his ad budget. G&Z believed in advertising. To consider reducing commercials was heresy.
