Zero-based budgeting: Critical to growth or a distraction?

Zero-based budgeting (ZBB) is a contentious issue. Advocates talk up its benefits in ensuring marketing focuses on its strategic objectives, while detractors claim it is bureaucratic and wastes time.
Yet it is becoming increasingly popular in marketing departments, particularly at major FMCG firms.
ZBB is a way of budgeting that means marketers start with a clean slate each year, hence the “zero-base”. Rather than taking last year’s advertising spend as a benchmark for determi