Reports are coming in that sales are diving in the advertising and marketing world. Which makes sense. How can you expect lots of catalog orders when people are glued to their TV sets? How can you advertise in the media when your ad will appear grotesque in the context of the somber news?

Back in 1990 during the Gulf War, I was in charge of North American direct marketing for famed defense publisher Jane's. The press kept on calling us to find out if our sales were up because of the war. Nope. Not at all. Sales sucked. We got unbelievable PR from the War -- they even interviewed one of our editors during the SuperBowl half-time break! But I couldn't make budget. Nobody was buying anything, they were too busy focusing on the crisis.

Yes, stopping terrorism is MUCH more important than anyone's sales goals. Period.

Being a businessperson though, I hope that more companies and jobs are not lost during the battle. It's already been such a hard year for so many of my friends, colleagues and competitors. For some of them this will be an unsustainable blow.