Bite-Sized Blog

Playing it safe? That might actually be your biggest risk.

There are a hundred ways to influence how people think, feel and buy. And somewhere in the process of narrowing it all down 'right' tends to get confused with 'safe' – and that's where things go wrong.

In digital, you can’t afford to be safe… Because trying to be 100% safe is a surefire way to be 100% boring.

With attention spans dwindling, the first 3 seconds of your content better have an impact, otherwise consumers keep scrolling. And if they do stick around they're judging you with every single frame.

At the end of the day, marketing is a risky business and managing that risk is something we all need to think about, but trying to remove it entirely all but guarantees you’ll produce boring ‘vanilla’ content – and that’s a bigger risk than taking a creative one in the first place.

That said this isn't a licence to go rogue. The goal is finding the right amount of creative risk – enough to cut through the noise, but not so much that the whole team ends up in an awkward meeting on Monday morning.

Context matters too. If someone's already deep in the consideration phase, straightforward features-and-benefits content absolutely has its place e.g. on a product page, or in a comparison tool on your website.

But right at the top of the funnel where you're fighting for attention against everything else in someone's feed? That's not the moment to play it safe. That's the moment to be bold.