Get Bold Work Out Into the World: How to Seize the Chaos Advantage
After more than 15 years advising some of the world’s largest brands through reinventions, crises, cultural shifts and periods of profound uncertainty, I’ve learned something we’ve intuitively known all along:
The moments that feel riskiest are actually the moments that demand the most conviction. And playing it safe is the riskiest move of all.
That was the underlying theme I heard across the Croisette this week at Cannes Lions 2026.
Lou McEwan from McLaren shared a staggering statistic: 50% of McLaren’s audience is new over the last decade. That’s not an audience challenge. It’s a reminder that many of the assumptions we built brands around are quietly expiring.
On stage, Marisa Thalberg, EVP & Chief Customer and Marketing Officer of Catalyst Brands, put it even more directly: “I’ve been brave because actually I’m afraid not to be.” That sentiment surfaced repeatedly throughout Cannes.
Consumers are changing. The same tricks won’t work. Culture is fragmenting. Trust is harder to earn. Attention is harder to keep. And yet so much marketing is still optimized to avoid mistakes rather than create momentum.
One deeper challenge kept following me from stage to stage: The demand for performance has become performative, forcing some of the best marketers in the world into a cycle of retreat.
Somewhere along the way, organizations became obsessed with proving value now instead of creating it.
Yet the most compelling conversations at Cannes weren’t about choosing between brand and performance, reputation and growth, or creativity and data. They were about recognizing those are false choices.
In fact, many of the CMOs drawing the biggest crowds were making the same argument: risk isn’t something to mitigate. It’s a capability to build.
Which brings me to what may be the defining challenge facing modern marketers:
How do you get bold work approved and shipped?
The challenge isn’t conviction. It’s getting bold, smart work through the system.
At Cannes, FleishmanHillard and Contagious unveiled new research: The Chaos Advantage. The findings validated a tension many marketers have felt for years.
88% of marketing leaders believe bold work is more effective. Yet 78% say their organizations produce mostly safe work. The overwhelming majority of leaders already believe bold work wins.
But what does that tension actually mean in practice?
If bold work becomes controversial, the answer is the same: better intelligence.
One of the most fascinating conversations at Cannes came from Craig Brommers, reflecting on one of the most polarizing campaigns of the past year.
At launch, the infamous Sydney Sweeney-helmed campaign had helped drive a 25% increase in stock value.
Then Brommers’ high school daughter came home and told him, “Dad, you’re getting canceled on TikTok.”
The tension was real. But instead of reacting to the loudest voices, the team went to the data.
Traffic was up. Transactions were up. New customer acquisition was up.
They quickly commissioned research to understand how actual customers—not social media commentators—felt about the campaign.
That intelligence helped guide decisions that ultimately contributed to a 180% increase in stock value.
When asked what got them over the finish line, Brommers’ answer was simple:
“Real-time data allowed us to make the right decision not just for social media and outside voices, but for the business.”
That’s the difference between reckless risk and informed confidence.
Too often, risk management has evolved from an enabling function into a veto function.
Our research found that 66% of marketers say risk management blocks more than it enables. Bold work takes an average of seven days to approve. Safe work takes three.
That delay may seem manageable in isolation. But multiplied across approval cycles, cultural moments and competitive opportunities, it becomes a growth problem.
Almost half (42%) have watched competitors capture a cultural moment simply because they moved faster.
Most telling of all, 85% agree delayed decisions cause more damage than imperfect ones.
Yet many organizations continue to operate as if the greatest threat is making the wrong move.
The greater threat is making no move at all.
That same tension surfaced throughout Cannes:
In creator marketing, the conversation is no longer whether creators matter. The question is whether brands can loosen control enough to preserve the authenticity that makes creators effective in the first place.
In women’s sports, the opportunity isn’t simply increasing investment. It’s having the conviction to build fandom, tell richer stories, and establish credibility before the rest of the market catches up.
Different categories. Same challenge.
The organizations pulling ahead aren’t taking bigger risks. They’re making better decisions faster.
That’s why I believe the most important insight from Cannes isn’t that chaos exists. It’s that chaos can be an advantage.
For years, organizations have treated uncertainty as something to defend against. The brands creating disproportionate growth are treating it as an opening to challenge category conventions before competitors do.
An opening to build relevance while others are waiting for permission.
The irony is that cautious behavior doesn’t necessarily create safer outcomes.
Our new data showed bold brands experience backlash at roughly the SAME rate as cautious brands.
The difference is whether something meaningful was created in return.
So how do we seize the Chaos Advantage?
From what we’ve seen, it isn’t bigger budgets. It isn’t louder ideas. And it certainly isn’t fearlessness. It’s confidence built through evidence.
The organizations getting bold work into the world are doing three things differently.
✅ They distinguish perceived risk from actual risk.
✅ They use predictive intelligence to understand how stakeholders are likely to respond before decisions are made.
✅ They build approval processes designed to accelerate decision-making rather than slow it down.
This is where agencies must evolve. Our role isn’t simply to generate ideas. It’s to help clients move.
To expose where risk management has become a veto function instead of an enabling one.
To distinguish perceived risk from actual risk. To bring together reputation expertise, cultural fluency, predictive intelligence and creative ambition into a single decision-making framework.
To provide the evidence, guardrails and intelligence that transform “that’s risky” into “we can stand behind this.”
The brands moving fastest aren’t ignoring risk. They’re building systems that allow them to move confidently within it. That’s how bold work gets approved. That’s how bold work gets shipped.
And increasingly, that’s how growth happens.
Cameron Shields is FleishmanHillard’s Global Head of Consumer, Brand Impact .
Colleen McTaggart is a global executive creative director based in Chicago.
Ellie Tuck is the chief creative officer of the Americas based in New York. 
Judith Rowland is a senior vice president in the Public Affairs and Engagement group and also serves as global sustainability lead for the food, agriculture and beverage (FAB) sector. She helps clients establish strategies for advancing community reputation and social impact, set measurable goals and communicate their progress with the stakeholders that matter most.
