In media and communications, playing it safe rarely makes history. Yet our industry remains bound by loss aversion – the psychological bias where the pain of losing outweighs the joy of winning. Planners and brand leaders alike are under relentless pressure to hit short-term targets. In the process, we risk losing sight of how a brand builds an enduring presence in people’s lives and creates genuine cultural momentum.
There has been a lot of talk in the industry around a shortage of big ideas, but simply telling teams to “be braver” isn’t a solution. Courage can’t just be taught on demand. To make big ideas the norm, rather than an optional afterthought, we have to change how we build them. That means moving away from evaluating ideas against historic benchmarks that offer false comfort and instead adopting a repeatable process that embeds strategic bravery into the planning process from day one. From the moment we receive or start working on a brief, we need to think about how we can humanise the business problem and take a clear and decisive stance on the role of media and communications in influencing this and the way people behave.
Strategic bravery isn’t reckless gambling; it’s standing firm on sound strategy. It requires the courage to:
Notice: Human Understanding Over Algorithmic Autopilot
Big ideas that capture the zeitgeist stem from being deeply tapped into how people think, feel, act, and behave far beyond a narrowly defined brief. Algorithms and standard AI tools optimise for what has already happened, pushing entire categories into comfortable sameness. Noticing human behaviour is the antidote. By keeping every sense alert for the subtle cultural sparks and nuances of real human behaviour, planners can identify what is about to matter before the data reflects it.
Think Big: Aiming for Category Salience
Once a cultural spark is identified, planning must resist the safety blanket of hyper-targeting and short-term optimization. True scale requires category salience. As Binet and Field’s foundational research shows, creative and fame-driving campaigns are up to 11 times more effective at driving share-of-market growth. Thinking big means planning for broader reach and long-term business outcomes rather than just immediate efficiency metrics. But going big doesn’t always mean more budget, it can also mean expanding the target audience beyond the current focus, which in turn means motivating people who currently aren’t engaged. And that requires a new kind of braver work.
Do Different: Disrupting Category Norms
A big idea requires execution that breaks the consumer autopilot. Look at where competitors are playing and deliberately explore underutilized channels, formats, publishers or partnerships. If media selection simply mimics category norms, even the boldest creative concept gets lost in the noise.
Prove It: Measuring the Right Outcomes
Bravery becomes much easier when risk is managed through clear evidence and shared accountability. Rather than defending unmeasurable concepts, strategic bravery relies on robust, boardroom accepted, frameworks:
- Early Signalling: Use qualitative research and early testing as directional indicators
- Defending the Long & Short: Use econometrics, incrementality testing, and long-term brand tracking to validate the classic 60/40 brand-to-activation split with hard commercial proof.
- Tracking Cultural Traction: Map how human understanding inspires ideas that gain momentum across paid, earned, shared, and owned media, directly linking cultural resonance to both immediate performance and sustained growth.
Why Independence Matters for Strategic Bravery
Delivering on this process requires an agency structure built to support it.
The industry commentary surrounding media planning often points out why holding companies struggle to recommend truly disruptive ideas. The case for independent agencies is structural: recommendations aren’t shaped by platform trading deals, group volume commitments, or proprietary tech stacks.
Without rigid corporate mandates, independent agencies have the freedom to deliver the honest and sometimes inconvenient answers that clients actually need – and they have the flexibility to align on shared outcomes that make calculated bravery easier for brand leaders.
Strategic bravery isn’t about reckless gambling; it’s about standing firm on sound strategy, rigorous evidence, and uncompromised choices. If a plan doesn’t provoke a mix of excitement and nervous anticipation, it isn’t big enough to move the market.
