In business, playing it safe sucks. Consider ‘courageous marketing’ instead

Back in the day, most people would answer that question by saying, “Great!”

But in 2023, most of us shrug or grimace or say, “weird” or “I don’t know” or — gulp — “not good.”

Of course, we’re working in uncertain times, so what can we expect? But we’ve been living and working in uncertain times for years. In uncertainty, it’s natural to want to play it safe, but that has left a lot of companies stuck in neutral, afraid to make a move, content to sit tight and wait for everything to calm down.

Well, guess what? It isn’t going to calm down. This is the world we live and work in. We can’t stay frozen in place, playing it safe, waiting for everything to be “normal.”

Because playing it safe is about the most dangerous thing a company can do.

Not-so-fun fact: More than half of the companies in the Fortune 500 in the Year 2000 were gone by the year 2020. They didn’t all die of the same cause, of course, but I am quite sure that very few of those companies were worried about going out of business back in 2000.

But many of them got too comfortable, didn’t innovate fast enough, didn’t take the competition seriously … whatever. They stopped evolving, so they went extinct.

We can’t shrink from the stage when the world gets a little uncomfortable. We can’t stop talking to our customers. When the economy gets a little dicey, companies’ first move is often to stop marketing themselves. This is almost always shortsighted and stupid.

When it becomes harder to generate revenue and growth is threatened, you’re going to stop talking to customers? This is precisely the moment when we need to be courageous. It’s a chance to zoom ahead of all the other scaredy cats.

If your job at your company is to help drive growth — specifically if you’re in top management, sales or marketing — you need to make the case that now is the time to be bold. While your competitors recede into the background, this is your opportunity to make a positive, confident impression on your future customers. Because those future customers still have to run their business, and they sure could use your help.

Easier said than done, I know.

At a very basic level, courageous marketing in the face of uncertainty simply requires you to keep moving forward. Keep doing great work. Keep expending the effort (and money!) to engage the marketplace.

At a higher level, you can try to fill the vacuum created by your competition shriveling into the corner.

This requires rolling up your sleeves and working. You’re not going to concoct a brilliant idea in a one-hour meeting. Being bold demands time, intellectual energy and rigor in order to create the deep-seated belief we need to withstand criticism.

That’s why we created this framework for courageous marketing. Consider these the four pillars of courageous marketing:

• Knowledge — Creating a unique point of view steeped in your team’s experience and know-how
• Confidence — Stress-testing this unique POV so that your belief in the concept withstands the criticism of naysayers, both internally and externally. Be assured—people will come at you; this is the step when you fortify your armor so you can handle the heat.
• Action — A two-parter: Creating great messaging and materials, and then boldly putting it out into the world in an aggressive way.
• Evolution — Tweaking the things you didn’t get quite right. Importantly, this is not an excuse to pull back everything.

Is courageous marketing easy? No. Is it worthwhile? Yes.

After all, fortune favors the brave, and most of us are here to try to make our mark.