The Action Gap: Leaders Know Bold Work Wins. They’re Just Not Moving Fast Enough.

88% of marketing leaders believe bold work is what drives results, yet 78% admit their organizations mostly produce safe work. That’s the action gap.

We spotted this tension in our new Chaos Advantage research, based on a survey of 1,000 senior marketing and communications leaders around the world. The study reveals just how costly the gap between knowing and doing has become.

The gap doesn’t start in the brief. It starts in the room where the brief gets approved. Leaders don’t lack conviction. They lack cover. They want the big idea, but they want it armed with evidence, guardrails, and real-time intelligence. Because a great idea without a great argument is just an expensive mistake.

That’s the tension. We know bold works. But bold without proof feels reckless. And in an environment where every dollar is scrutinized, bravery needs backup.

But what does BOLD really look like?

On day one at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, humanity showed up everywhere in the winning work. Bold, unapologetic, and perhaps hidden in plain sight.

Novartis’s Relax Your Tight End tapped into the very human fear of a colonoscopy, using humor to reframe an uncomfortable conversation and make it approachable.

Beat Cancer Off leaned into another undeniable human truth: people masturbate. Instead of avoiding that reality, it embraced it—boldly encouraging men to do more of it in the name of early cancer detection.

Viagra found a way around strict advertising regulations in China by creating hilariously blue branded products—sex innuendos brought to life. If we can’t talk about sex, let’s talk about sex without talking about it. A perfect example of creativity subverting the rules.

And then there was Not Manufactured Reviews – not polished copy or over-engineered messaging, but the real, messy, human words people use when they actually experience a product. Maybe the most innovative product demo of all.

The common thread? None of this work spoke to “consumers.” It spoke to people. And that’s the truth: we are humans first.

The same should be true of marketing. The best ideas don’t target consumers—they connect with humans.

But connection alone isn’t enough. To get brave work through the system, it needs both instinct and infrastructure. The human truth, backed by the right proof.

So maybe the question we should ask ourselves isn’t, “What will perform?”

It’s: What is the beautiful truth of being human here?

That’s where bravery lives. That’s where courage starts.

I’ll leave with something our client and Catalyst CMO Marisa Thalberg said on stage with Ashley Graham at The Female Quotient:

“Listen to what people are saying about your brand, look for the signals, and then blow wind onto them.”

So is the most audacious thing a marketer can do simply this: act on what we already know?

Because doing what we believe doesn’t require a secret formula. It requires something much simpler: humanity. The rest is just the proof to make others believe, too.

And maybe that’s the point. The best creative work doesn’t start with the “consumer” lens. It starts with the human lens.

Get More From Cannes: Why Playing It Safe Is the Riskiest Move of All

Colleen McTaggart is a global executive creative director based in Chicago.