The risk of not taking risks: Why playing it safe might be holding your brand back
They just look risky because they challenge the status quo. But underneath the surface, they’re built on sharp strategy, confident leadership, and often… gut feel that someone backed hard enough to make real. And they’re grounded in more than a little consumer insight.
In a climate where uncertainty is the only certainty, one truth has come into sharp focus: playing it safe may no longer be the safest option. Across industries, brands and board rooms, creative leaders are increasingly recognising that risk is not just an ingredient for innovation, it's the catalyst.
Following three packed Exhibition of Insights events exploring ‘The Risk of Not Taking Risks’, a set of clear themes emerged across every room.
We couldn’t capture every powerful sound bite, but these reflections cover the ideas that resonated most. For anyone invested in making bold, meaningful work in a world where playing it safe is the bigger risk.
Rethinking the idea of risk
Most bold work is anything but impulsive. It’s intentional. Thought-through. Rooted in clarity, and fuelled by a deep understanding of audience, culture and timing. Risk becomes calculable when it’s underwritten by insight and backed by leadership prepared to hold their nerve.
As Kedda Ghazarian of Bonds shared, risk appetite isn’t about bravado, it’s about confidence built through validation. Her team didn’t just green-light a brave idea with their Robert Irwin campaign; they pressure-tested across demographics, feeding insight back into the process in real time. That tension between instinct and data? That’s where distinctive work lives.
But risk doesn’t live in frameworks alone. It’s emotional. It surfaces in which stories are told, and who gets to tell them. And it plays out most critically in how organisations navigate scrutiny. Risk is often miscast as recklessness. But when approached with clarity and intent, it becomes a strategic tool.
Without the right mindset, risk gets flattened into fear. But reframed as opportunity, it becomes a creative discipline, one that’s repeatable, teachable, and scalable with a little validation.
Playing it safe is more expensive than you think
Nick Garrett shared an anecdote at the Exhibition of Insights about a campaign stalled by slow, traditional research cycles and how it underlines a bigger problem: hesitation is expensive. In this case, a creative idea loved by stakeholders globally was delayed for months because it failed to resonate in one market. The campaign was ultimately produced as originally intended, but valuable time, momentum, and trust were lost.
But the problem isn’t testing. The most progressive creative teams now operate with agile feedback loops, not to deflate ambition, but to protect it. Testing, at its best, isn’t about getting the idea “right” or being the “first” to land something new. It’s about sense-checking early signals. Gauging friction. Spotting blind spots. And sharpening ideas while they’re still flexible enough to evolve.
Testing doesn’t have to be a gate, it can be a guide. It invites iteration, provokes alternative angles, and uncovers truths that weren’t visible in the first draft. The point isn’t to seek consensus or preempt every objection. It’s to pressure-test potential. To reveal what’s resonant, not just what’s safe.
Insight should be upstream, not just on tap
Too often, insight is treated like it should be on demand. Dispense the right stats, tick the right box, then proceed. But that approach misunderstands what insight is actually for.
Bec Stambanis of Special Australia makes the case for a journalism mindset: one rooted in inquiry, curiosity, and discomfort. The most valuable insights aren’t always buried in quant decks, they’re found in questions that make people pause. It's a shift from using research to 'prove' ideas, to letting it provoke better ones.
Ana Cohen from One NZ reinforced this point: the best insights rarely arrive on schedule. They show up sideways, unexpectedly, informally, even inconveniently. Which is exactly why insight needs to be upstream. It's a reminder that insights are strongest when they shape the strategy from the start, not when they're tacked on at the end.
Insight alone isn't enough
Insight without execution is a beautiful dead end.
As Rob Dougan of Tourism Australia articulated, ideas need more than inspiration, they need infrastructure. The best campaigns, whether culturally iconic or commercially dominant, share a common trait: they’re not just clever. They’re clear. Rooted in strategy. Brought to life by partners who understand not just what the idea is, but what it needs to work.
Too often, insight becomes the destination instead of the launchpad. But ideas don’t sell themselves. They need shaping. Context. Champions. Stories to carry them up and across stakeholder layers. That’s where creative success becomes organisational success.
The gap isn’t always in the thinking, it’s in the translation. Execution is not the afterthought. It’s the second half of the idea.
Local nuance has global impact
Localisation isn’t just about language, it’s about identity.
As Jen Beirne recalled from her time at Amazon, launching Alexa in Australia wasn’t just a translation task, it was a reinvention. Training the voice assistant to understand and speak with local nuance wasn’t cosmetic. It was fundamental. "Aussies get Alexa because Alexa gets Aussies."
That kind of work requires more than surface-level adaptation. It demands cultural curiosity. A willingness to listen deeper and longer. And a belief that local context isn’t a constraint on global work, it’s the multiplier.
What resonates in one market may fall flat in another. Bravery is relative. So is risk. What’s radical in Sydney might be standard in São Paulo. The challenge, and the opportunity, is designing creative systems flexible enough to scale ambition and testing them without flattening ideas..
Creativity doesn’t need defending, it needs translating
The problem isn’t creativity. It’s how creativity is framed.
Nick Garrett offered a sharp distinction between agency and consultancy mindsets. Agencies often lead with "I think"; consultants, with "I know." That simple language shift reflects a broader gap in how creative ideas are sold, and why they often aren't.
The best ideas aren’t fragile. They can hold their own under scrutiny, if they’re given the right foundation. That means stronger briefs. Smarter, not more, data. A language that resonates across disciplines, not just within creative circles.
The best work is built together
Bold work emerges when agencies and brands behave as partners, not vendors.
Real creative bravery doesn’t emerge from perfect handovers. It comes from shared ambition.
As Amanda Furse of Medibank and Michael Magee of Kraft Heinz both emphasised, the difference between good work and great work often lies in how the relationships are structured. Agencies treated like vendors will deliver to spec. But those embedded as true partners co-own the outcome, and stick with it through the hard bits.
Trust changes everything. It makes risk feel less like a solo leap and more like a shared step. And when insight is shared early, when creative teams and business leads build the idea together, the work carries a different kind of energy. This leads to more confidence, more fluency, and more resilience through execution.
This isn’t just a nicer way to work. It’s a smarter one. Alignment at the start reduces friction at the end. And involving customers in the process, through fast testing or collaborative prototyping, adds another voice to the room. One that sharpens, rather than steers.
Curiosity is your biggest creative asset
One of the simplest, yet most profound takeaways? The best work often starts with what looks like naivety, what some might even call “stupidity”. The willingness to ask the obvious question. To challenge the assumed answer. To admit you don’t know… yet.
That kind of openness isn't a weakness. It’s the root of sharp strategy, original thinking, and brave work. Because when you ask better questions, you unlock better ideas.
Risk isn’t a personality trait, it’s a practice. A discipline. A habit built through experience, supported by process, and strengthened by failure.
Create space for uncertainty, and treat learning as momentum. Because relevance is a moving target, not a fixed destination.
In the end, the real risk isn’t that the work doesn’t land. It’s that no one notices, it’s that your customer doesn’t notice.
With huge thanks to the 14 brilliant speakers who shared their stories, strategies, and sharp takes across our Exhibition of Insights series: Kedda Ghazarian, Bec Stambanis, Amanda Furse, Michael Magee, James Hurman, Clive Ormerod, Sarah Sandoval, Ana Cohen, Al Crawford, Jen Beirne, Rob Dougan, Nick Garrett, Nicole Jauncey, and Brent Smart. While we couldn’t reference every voice directly, their insights are woven throughout this piece, and will continue to shape the way we think about risk, creativity, and building braver work.
