War-game a campaign budget reallocation by testing whether kill criteria, attribution lag, and owner authority still protect cash when a channel looks hot and the quarter calendar is short.
Budget moves fail when "winning channel" is undefined, when reallocations dual-count the same dollars as saved and as reinvested, and when stop rules live only as a slide. The review needs named success metrics, dated spend samples, and a measurable definition of when money must pause for each campaign family.
Freeze the budget package
List each campaign family with spend, intended outcome, attribution window, owner, and the evidence types that count. Attach sample weekly reports from the last two cycles, current pipeline contribution by channel, and outcomes from the last reallocation if one exists. Identify partner or brand campaigns that cannot use a generic CAC ladder without adaptation.
Name the decision: move as written, revise specific transfers, or hold until ownership of the kill switch is named. Include the finance link so cash and forecast can reconcile spend to claims.
Include the calendar of known launch and reporting events for the next two quarters: product launches, board-sensitive pipeline reads, and seasonal peaks that will collide with the new mix. A reallocation that ignores those dates will look calm until the week they land.
Seat both sides of the spend move
- Demand gen lead
- Defends readiness to apply the new mix and names the first thirty-day outcome checks.
- GTM ops lead
- Challenges which definitions will drift first under volume.
- Finance partner
- Tests whether burn and forecast still map without silent exceptions.
- Sales manager
- Shows how lead quality will be judged without inventing credit.
- Skeptic
- Finds the strongest "efficient reallocation" claim with the weakest kill evidence.
Run pressure cases before money moves
Use Pingpong to walk through a borderline channel win, a lagging attribution week that looks like failure, a manager who wants to skip a kill gate for a partner deadline, and a request to accelerate spend because a pipeline gap is close. For each case, start from the documented package. Ask who can pause a campaign and which evidence is required. Any step that depends on an unnamed person becomes a precondition.
Ask the room to replay one historical reallocation under the proposed rules. If the historical case looked clean while later forcing a quiet clawback, revise the package before money moves.
Compare with the GTM ops lead seat, an attribution model change stress test, and a marketing campaign stress test. More operating decisions live in the war-game decisions hub.
Authorize the move only after two reviewers can score the same sample week and land on the same continue or pause label within the documented tolerance.