Stay true, then break things: The counterpunch to dizzying disruption

Marketers are navigating a volatile industry landscape. AI is rewriting workflows, media habits are fragmenting and consumer expectations shift by the day. What brands need now is a counterpunch: the discipline to stay true to their long-term story, writes Shane Russell, CEO at HAVAS Red Australia.

In the mid 2000s Facebook introduced a gaudy statement that would go on to define much of tech culture over the following two decades: Move fast and break things. It conveyed a sense of urgency and a willingness to experiment, even if it led to unintended consequences (whatever could go wrong?).

Like all things that receive billions of dollars in funding to grow with reckless abandon, it was inevitable that ‘move fast and break things’ would eventually leap out of the tech arena and permeate every aspect of our world. As the late great Charlie Munger once said, “show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome”.

Technology is now the ubiquitous operating system of our lives, hijacking our attention, managing our most personal relationships, influencing how we view the world, and now, thinking and doing everything for us one agent at a time. Disruption doesn’t discriminate, and exponential change isn’t coming, it’s already here.

It’s a story that will feel all too familiar to marketers, who are charging into unchartered territory for how they now need to think, plan, operate, create, communicate, budget, and execute. And by the time they figure that out, it's possible that a new disruptive force will emerge out of nowhere.

It’s leading many to start thinking in shorter sprints and in some cases, through a narrower lens than ever before. Annual marketing plans, the once bastion of truth for everyone to align around, can quickly become a recipe for broken dreams if regular micro-adaptations aren’t made along the way.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastical time to be working in our industry, provided you’re comfortable landing a paper airplane in the middle of a category 5 storm.

The Tortoise and the Hair: Finding the balance of both

Don’t fret, we can look to the tech industry for some of the answer.

Around a decade ago I was running a comms team at a global tech company in New York where I’d attend fortnightly sprint meetings. These were a chance for rockstar coders, developers, and product managers to show the latest results from their rapid A-B tests, reacting to or pushing new customer trends with the move of a widget, all to improve metrics 0.5-1%.

In those meetings our Comms team felt like square pegs in round holes trying to mimic their rapid test and learn approach when our focus was on larger comms objectives, like corporate and executive storytelling, brand and product news, reputation management, or customer success campaigns. We’re comms people, so we’re used to pivoting and thinking on the fly, but back then, it wasn’t at the pace of our tech brothers and sisters. The larger payoff of our comms work could take months, even years, in shaping a reputation and brand story that resonated with more people over time.

Fast forward to 2025, and those learnings appear more vital than ever.

At Havas Red, we are lucky to partner with a range of brands that have spent years or even decades shaping long term brand storytelling, positioning and reputation.

One of those is Tourism Tasmania, the state marketing body that has developed one of the most effective brand platforms in the industry, “Come Down for Air”, in partnership with the smart folks at BMF.

By thinking and acting long term at an organisational and marketing level, they've created not only a uniquely Tasmanian brand platform, but a moat and runway that affords them the ability to approach today's otherworldly disruption in ways that not all brands can.

It’s an incredible thing to behold: the ability to stay true to the essence of long-term vision, values, and strategy, and knowing exactly what their story is in the eyes of curious travellers.

Their commitment to the long game means they can move with certainty, and without distraction, when a new opportunity presents itself. From a communications perspective, it allows our team at Havas Red to lean even deeper into the anti-ordinary stories that make the state famous, with proactive or reactive activities that fit beautifully into culture’s news cycle.

With all that brand equity our PR team can test, adapt, and iterate through always-on media relations and storytelling, while maximising the enormous shift in where and how people consume news. For our larger earned campaign spikes like the award-winning “Odd Jobs”, storytelling starts in owned channels and grows through content produced for traditional media, social media, influencer, and paid, creating a story with the opportunity to spread natively in each channel.

The success of the brand platform and comms campaigns aren’t flukes; everything starts and ends with strategic foresight and constant iteration regardless of what’s happening in the world around us.

A dual strategy in the storm

To quote another iconic American, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” – Mike Tyson.  

How can we, as agency partners, guide brands into and through the new world order? Let’s close out with some takeaways:

1. First and foremost, be real. What we think is the right course now, may not be in a matter of months. And that’s ok, we play the ball where it lies, provided we have the planning and mental framework to help adapt their overarching strategy at the speed of disruption.  

2. Understand that winning isn't about moving fast and breaking things, it’s about staying true and then breaking ground. You want to build a core so solid it can't be swayed by passing trends, while maintaining the nimbleness to duck, weave and strike in the moments that matter. With that, you’ll have the clarity to decide if your brand should or shouldn’t jump into this month’s edition of ‘brands reacting weirdly to Taylor Swift’.

3. With those foundations in place, it's vital to move our clients into a constant and strategic state of test, learn, and iterate at some level. Ultimately, the counterpunch to dizzying disruption isn't about choosing a new speed, it’s finding the balance of both.  

Our clients are wading through a sea of dynamic change, some with less resources but bigger responsibilities than ever before. AI might be coming to replace or enhance areas of our industry, but what it can’t deliver (yet) is the emotional intelligence and critical human thinking that the comms industry has built its own brand on.