The rewards of taking risks

Michael J. McDermott

With pressure mounting to deliver measurable results, some marketers in the US are shying away from risky campaigns – but too much risk aversion can throttle creativity.

With pressure mounting to deliver measurable results, some marketers are shying away from risky campaigns – but too much risk aversion can throttle creativity.

Over the past decade, "risk" has become a dirty word in some corners of marketing, resulting in a drift toward conservatism within many organizations. It's easy to see how and why it happened, but when risk aversion becomes too pronounced in marketing, it engenders new risks of its own. The most prominent one is a disconnect from innovation, a quality that's driven some of marketing's most successful campaigns.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg summed it...

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