The line that arrived signed

In Egypt the largest line in a year of media is usually agreed before anybody has written a plan.

The drama that runs through this month is sold early and sold high up: the producer, the commercial side of the broadcaster, and a chairman or a chief executive who has known them for fifteen years. It is a conversation between two companies rather than a media negotiation, often settled in the autumn, over a call, with a handshake and a number.

The media team meets that number in January. It arrives as a line on a spreadsheet with a signature already on it. Nobody presents it. Nobody defends it against the alternatives, because there are no alternatives left to compare it with. The money is committed, the placement is fixed, and the only live question is what the remainder does around it.

I have built those plans. The honest description of the job is that you are allocating the change from a note the company has already spent, and most of the craft goes into making a third of a budget read like a strategy rather than a residue.

What makes it a problem is not the deal. Some of those deals are the best value available, and the relationship that produced them is a real asset no planner could have bought.

The problem is the document. It reads as though every line in it had been chosen, and it goes into a folder. Next year somebody opens it, reasons from it, and treats the largest number in it as evidence of a decision that was never taken.

So I started putting two columns in the plan. Chosen. Inherited. Nobody enjoyed the second column, and it is the only part of the document still honest twelve months later.