Navigating disruption

It’s not when you show up, but how you show up

Cultural tension, economic pressure, political division aren’t background considerations anymore. They are the constant context brands need to navigate every day. In that context, brand buyers are more alert, more critical, and far less forgiving when brands get it wrong. And yet, marketers are consistently pressured to move at the “speed of culture”. Be quick. Be visible. Be part of the conversation. However, in a volatile environment, speed without substance is risky, because deciding to show up is one thing but deciding how to show up is another. That decision is a creative one.

Where responsive brands start with the brand (its voice, its assets, its buyers) and use creativity to interpret the moment and land the brand, reactive brands often misjudge the moment and the role they play in it.

 

When creativity isn’t doing its job

For example, American Eagle’s 2025 “Great Jeans” campaign didn’t fail because it moved too quickly. It failed because the creative idea couldn’t hold the weight of the cultural context it entered.

American Eagle’s “Great Jeans” (2025):

The intentional ambiguity of the word “jeans” in the ‘Sydney Sweeney has great jeans’ campaign was meant to provoke creatively. But in the context of a culturally sensitive moment that ambiguity created space for interpretation. And when brands leave space open, audiences fill it.

The result was a shift from a simple product endorsement message to a debate about race, representation, and eugenics. American Eagle relied solely on a generic self-professed product quality message and failed to anchor its creative in a brand and buyer truth, wholly ignoring the cultural context. As a result, the brand lost control over how the creative would be received.

This is where reactive brands can often fall down. They prioritise disruption over clarity, and novelty over meaning. They develop ideas in a vacuum devoid of context, rather than develop creative that emerges from the brand.

 

What responsive creativity looks like

When brands act responsively, creativity doesn’t chase a moment, it translates it or creates it.

Lime’s “Good Service on all Limes” (2025):

During last year’s transport strikes in London, the electric bike service Lime had an obvious functional role to play. But it was the simplicity of its creative response that made it effective.

A well-timed OOH campaign highlighting its ubiquity and availability against the backdrop of trainlines that had ground to a halt worked because it spoke to the moment in a way that was relevant to the brand, the context and its audience. Simple, clear, and using its brand assets effectively, it showed up in a way that felt relevant, useful and immediate.

Ikea is another brand that consistently navigates this world uncertainty with relevance. Their work is often topical, light-hearted and simple, underpinned by a clear creative code borne from its brand. The tone, the humour, the level of irreverence is all tightly managed. Take, for example, their “Do Try This at Home” campaign. It responded to the pressures of higher living costs its, building from its brand purpose to turn affordability into a source of creativity, comfort and a small act of rebellion for their buyers. Rather than reacting to an event, Ikea actively filters the pressures its buyers feel through its view on the world and how it can meaningfully respond, making it feel relevant and distinctly IKEA.

Ikea’s ‘Do Try This at Home’ (2024):

Where reactive brands tend to apply branding as a layer to a moment once they’ve decided to react, responsive brands act creatively with the brand as their starting point. They ask:

• Is this moment relevant to the brand and its buyers?
• What does the brand have to say that only it can say?
• Is what it has to say interesting and relevant to its buyers?
• How does it express itself through assets people recognise?

If there isn’t a clear answer to these questions, they move on. Brands that force the moment leads to creative work that feels opportunistic and ill-conceived, and at worst tone-deaf.

 

Build the brand, not the noise

Speed matters. But responsiveness matters more. When an opportunity arises, brands need to arrive at the right creative response grounded in who they are and what their buyers expect. The brands that get this right aren’t going at the speed of culture. Instead, they understand their place within it. That’s the difference.

At a time where anyone can react at any time, creativity that starts from the brand is what determines whether that response builds the brand or simply builds the noise.