Are You Seeing Cutbacks in 2009 PR Budgets?

People are starting to make budgets for 2009 spending, and the conventional wisdom is that corporate spending will be cut, whether that company is starting to see actual business declines or not. We’re in that weird period of the cycle when there is more uncertainty than certainty, and so corporate bosses go into “better safe than sorry” mode.

Even CEO-of-the-Universe Eric Schmidt of Google says they are feeling the pinch. In a Saturday New York Times interview, Schmidt said Google is starting to look for ways to trim expenses in anticipation of a potential advertising slow down.

Schmidt: The issue we face with the economic crisis is we don’t know as managers how long the crisis goes. So what is a prudent answer? A prudent answer is to watch hiring. We are hiring but at a slower rate. Last week, we made some number of tens of offers. I suspect that will continue. The other thing we have done is fairly detailed expense reviews to make sure we are not wasting money.

So let’s share some information here on the Catching Flack blog.What we want to know is this: are you starting to see budget cutbacks at your corporation or other enterprise, or are you starting to feel them or plan for them if you are on the agency side?