How to increase your marketing budget

Obviously it's to late for 2006 -- the CFO turned your plan down months ago, right? But Scott's Miracle-Gro has the solution, and it's time to get ready for 2007. What's the plan? Simple -- fire everybody in the company who smokes.

Bob Bernstock, president-chief operating officer of the company, said funding for the increased spending is coming largely from Project Excellence, a wide-ranging efficiency and cost-cutting program that includes more focused product rollouts, headcount reductions and an effort to control health-care costs by eliminating smokers from the company's employment rolls.

Marysville, Ohio-based Scotts is instituting the anti-smoking policy over the course of the next year, meaning existing employees will have to quit smoking or lose their jobs. The company is offering smoking cessation programs to the roughly one-third of Scotts employees who now smoke, Chairman-CEO Jim Hagedorn said.