Mankind is surrounded by intelligence and expertise like never before. We have: elaborated IT systems, regulations and control for almost everything, consultants, auditors, spin doctors, and a bunch of Gurus who should carefully be listened to in every field of activity there is. Even in Direct Marketing...

The idea that such massive concentration of intelligence is to blame for the current economic crisis, is not - and cannot be - the thought I want to trace here. On an even more personal level, I blame completely different things for the crisis: greed, the complete loss of common sense, privileged positions on production and distribution markets and the arrogance derived from them... All these sad premises can only lead to the sad result we are confronting now.

The question I want to pose is this: are we still the proponents of all the intelligence and its fruits, that we had going for us before the crisis started?

Based on three observations, I have come to believe that we are not, that we have ceased to be the advocates of smart solutions, we once chose to be. The fact that almost every link in the economic chain has been simplified in the bad sense of the term, is something that I have been observing ever since the crisis started. Including in the activity I am conducting: Direct Marketing.

The first observation: this simplification has led to a massive cutting down of costs. If budgets for communication are being canceled systematically, the communication provider cannot offer the same range of services that were offered before. Thus the relationship with the customer begins to suffer to such an extent that the budgets will be even thinner. But, this time not because of the crisis-driven fear, which says that it’s good to cut on communication budgets, but because there is really no more revenue, because customers have fled, not being provided for anymore.

Secondly: all investments and development plans ongoing during the crisis period are said to contribute to nothing else but to the vulnerability of the company. Hence, firms tend to put projects on stand by or to terminate them and thus: generate loss which is not to be gained back. The sad part about it is that only then will investment be really lost forever.

Thirdly, and most painfully: there is a new term surfacing, the term of „over quality”. It means that people are only willing to pay for the content of the service, but are not willing to pay for its quality. Thus, quality is not something that differentiates anymore, but something that drives costs in an undesired manner.

Based on these observations, I have come to conclude that all the fruits of intelligence and all the elaborated schemes we were praising in the past: are now being shut down! And alongside them: our own intelligence. The only excuse for choosing to be stupid is the argument of survival in such troubled times. But, will stupidity make us fitter? I strongly doubt that...

...I cannot imagine survival without striving for quality, without engaging in new projects. I cannot imagine reducing complexity by ignoring it altogether, hoping that it will disappear. And if a company should set as its main goal the reduction of costs, instead of producing its output in the best possible manner, then we are sure to have reached a level in which this company, and its stakeholders alike, have become:

Irrecoverably stupid...be there crisis or not!