Crisis? What Crisis?

A comedian, I can't remember which one, once said. "Recession is when you are out of work…depression is when I'm out of work!” With all the political chundering going on, debating whether the present recession is or isn't as bad as the nineteen thirties you'd imagine that everyone was, or was about to be, out of work; that disaster was about to overtake us all. But take the "Half Full" view of what is really happening.

Recession isn't new; we've been there before, many times. And come through them stronger than we were before. Don't forget that before this all started we were enjoying a period where money was easy to come by, perhaps not so easy to pay back but who’s fault was that? It was a period where even children came to expect hundreds of pounds to be spent on Christmas Presents, only to find that the hi-tech item that was so important to possess was out fashion a couple of months later. Houses, cars, travel, eating out, eating in with take-aways, for most people life wasn't too awful. How long did we expect that to go on for without someone sending us a bill? ….that as it happens we couldn't pay because suddenly we are in recession, or depression depending on where you stand.

Until the nineteen sixties how many people, I mean ordinary people, went abroad for their holidays? How many owned a car? How many lived in a house they actually owned? How many even had bank accounts? Not many I can tell you. I remember the time when streets were played in by children without fear of being run over by a constant stream of cars and when poverty was commonplace. Real poverty, no food, no work, no prospects, and no benefits apart from what outfits like the Salvation Army soup kitchens could provide. So although things could be better, they have been very much worse.

So if you are in business what do you do in a recession? Pack up? Pull up the drawbridge? Blame it onto the politicians, or someone else, anyone else? Or do something different? How did businesses survive previous recessions? Well to begin with the wisest asked themselves the question "What business am a really in?" then began to examine if that was really the market they had been trying to reach. And if it was, how come they had so many peripheral activities going on that were not contributing to the core business? So they pruned the business in every area they could and re-directed their marketing activity, using every modern means of communication available to them. A classic example of this is the newspaper business.

When commercial television was launched it was confidently forecast that the newspapers would be so badly affected by the movement of advertising to the new medium, that they could not survive. They did. Circulations reached record levels in the seventies and currently they are using the internet to good effect. It is very important that they do survive. They are the cornerstones of free speech. The magazine business survived colour television by widening the choice available, look in any newsagents or supermarket and you'll be amazed by the number of titles available.

So how do we get out of this recession? Well, if I knew the answer to that question I'd be a very wealthy dinosaur wouldn't I? I do know it won't be solved by moaning, blaming someone else, or doing the same thing all over again. That's what caused the problem in the first place.
So it will have to be hard work and innovation. Still you now have one thing that those in earlier recessions didn't have; the internet. Now at very little cost, everyone can have their own website and can tell the world how good their product or service is. The world is your oyster.

"Ah yes" I hear, "It's OK for you, you're a dinosaur and extinct, we're alive and are here and now." Let me tell you, this dinosaur is not extinct, while all the other dinosaurs were eating themselves into obesity or fighting one another….I was at work, so I missed the big bang!