Article
October 6, 2026
By Ellie Tuck
You can’t ‘wait out’ chaos any longer. You have to know how to move through it.
Remember when chaos used to be a once-in-a-while moment and then things would return to a predictable, reliable calm? Ahhh, those were the days.
Now, chaos and unpredictability are part of our daily experience. There’s barely a client conversation where some outside threat doesn’t stand in the way of sign-off or execution planning, whether AI-fueled misinformation or culture wars. The unpredictability of our operating environment has become one of the most predictable things about working in this industry today.
And it’s impacting the work. Let’s wait-and-see. Tone it down. Remove our point of view. Rather than avoiding failure, safe work just creates a different kind altogether, one most brands aren’t accounting for. This inspired us to search for the real cost of caution. We asked 1,000 senior marketing and communications leaders across North America, EMEA and APAC and worked with our partners at Contagious to analyze recent Cannes Lions and Effie Awards winners to find out: what is truly safe anymore?
The results are now in and they’re stark. Here are the headlines:
- 88% of marketing leaders believe bold creative drives real impact, yet most say their organizations still produce mostly safe work.
- 58% say missing opportunities through caution happens more often than facing real consequences for being bold.
- Safe brands and bold brands experience public backlash at identical rates.
- Two-thirds say their own risk management processes block action more than they enable it.
- And 42% have already watched a competitor capture market share while they hesitated.
Dull, uninspired creative isn’t a safer bet either. It drops brand conversion by 37% and long-term ROI by 14%. The organizations willing to act are the ones capturing the attention, the market share and the growth that uncertainty makes available.
This is The Chaos Advantage, our full study released today. The old marketing playbook was built for a world where brands could control the message. That world is gone.
This new kind of playbook is built to help brands do more than just survive. To show them how to plan and prepare for uncertainty as standard. To build systems, teams and marketing muscle to thrive today.
Ellie Tuck is the chief creative officer of the Americas based in New York.
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