The zero was never zero

Every zero-based budget I have sat through starts from zero on the slide and from about a third on the spreadsheet.

The slide says every line must justify itself. The spreadsheet, when you open it, already has the platform annual deal in it, signed in the autumn for the volume discount. It has the Ramadan inventory, locked in October because that is when it is sold. It has the agency retainer, which renewed itself on a ninety-day clause nobody diarised. It has the sponsorship that was decided upstairs and arrived in marketing as a line, not a question.

None of those lines will justify themselves in December. They cannot. They were justified, or not, months ago, and the room is now reviewing decisions that have already been paid for.

So the exercise does what it always does. It spends its energy on the part of the budget that can still move, which is the smaller part, and cuts the things that are easiest to cut, which are usually the things that were working, because those are the ones with no contract behind them. The test budget goes. The creative line goes. The committed third sits untouched and gets called strategic.

I do not think the honest version is harder. It is earlier.

It begins by listing what cannot move, line by line, and next to each line the date on which it could have. The platform deal: September. The Ramadan inventory: October. The retainer: the month before the renewal. The sponsorship: whenever the conversation upstairs happened, which is worth finding out.

That list is the real budget review. It tells you which decisions marketing actually makes and which it inherits, and it tells you when next year's review has to happen if it is going to touch anything that matters.

It is due in October. Which is why it never gets done in December, and why the zero on the slide was never zero.