If cuts have to be made, the question then becomes which expenditure adds the least value? This is possibly what drives companies to reduce their advertising expenditure - simply because they do not understand its full value and especially as it is usually the single biggest investment on the balance sheet.
I am a big Brian Eno fan - the first few Brian Eno records are just absolute gibberish and he came up with a lot of lyrics by writing down loads and loads of random sentences and streams, and I find meaning in that music, even though he'd probably say it's absolute gibberish.