The good news is that I just heard sales of Spam are up.  Apparently, the iconic and economic entrée, despite its pork, is well positioned to weather the economic downturn.  Hey, Hormel, call me.

Meanwhile, what should the rest of the client roster do?  No denying the headlines are woeful, the predictions for ‘09 dire, and no matter how much hope you have or don’t for the Obama administration, he’s unlikely to find a magic wand in the top drawer of the Resolute desk.

Amid the uncertainty, commerce continues and more than ever companies that hesitate may indeed be lost.  That said, 2009 is probably not the best year to experiment with a Super Bowl commercial or to sponsor the next Space Shuttle launch.

But, hey, if you got it flaunt it.

Rather, 2009 is the year to adopt the age-old investment strategy of Dollar Cost Averaging.  It’s a common, often overlooked investing technique intended to reduce exposure to risk associated with a single large purpose.  The idea is to spend a fixed dollar amount at regular intervals (in our world, a retainer or fixed-fee amount); regardless of current share price.  Dollar Cost investors and retainer clients win over time, rather than receive immediate record-day returns and losses.

After all, it was the quick-win, high risk mentality that started boiling Wall Street’s pot in the first place.  Public relations and marketing clients, in the end, may give up an expected windfall in exchange for reduced variance.  However, since investing in public relations and marketing has an overall positive mean rate of return, clients who engage with their agency in this manner win every time.

So ask your public relations and marketing communications firm today, how to spread your PR and marketing investment across the calendar in the most effective way.  Like financial models, the client must determine how long the horizon will be.

What to do with how much you have?  When agencies answer that question honestly, creatively and correctly, that’s when they become partners.