“See reality as it is, not as you would like it to be.”
This was written by Curt Viebranz on a scrap piece of paper to Dave Morgan who I always thought to be the smartest online advertising visionary around. Turns out Curt wrote that to Dave in 2000 about Dave’s 2001 budgeting for Real Media Inc., the company Dave founded and was running at the time.
You can read the story here. I’m underscoring the quote because I’ve seen so many newspaper publishers budget up their 3% ad revenue and 1.5% circulation revenue year after year only to see shortfalls of double-digits. They never wanted to budget to reality.
I hope that’s changing now that reality is as stark as it can be.