Like venture capital or Hollywood, marketing's value comes from rare, breakout successes that far outweigh all other efforts. The marketer's job is to create opportunities for these unpredictable "10x" moments, rather than focusing solely on incremental, linear gains.

Poppy structures its marketing with an 80/20 split. 80% is planned against predictable retail and cultural calendars, while a crucial 20% is reserved for opportunistic, high-risk plays that tap into emerging trends with no guaranteed ROI. This framework enables agility and viral potential.

To avoid constant battles over unproven ideas, proactively allocate 5-10% of the marketing budget to a line item officially called "Marketing Experiments." Frame it to the CFO as a necessary fund for exploring new channels before current ones tap out and for seizing unforeseen opportunities.

To ensure positive Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI), Autodesk's CMO uses a simple rule: a partnership must generate at least three dollars for every dollar spent. This financial discipline forces marketers to pursue only high-impact collaborations that act as a force multiplier for the brand.

Companies often over-invest in safe, committee-approved ideas that yield minimal results. The real financial danger lies in the missed opportunity of bolder, seemingly riskier campaigns that are more likely to capture consumer attention and drive growth.

Coming from product, Wiz's CMO sees marketing as liberatingly low-risk. A bad product feature creates permanent technical debt and maintenance costs. In contrast, a failed marketing campaign can be stopped instantly with no lasting negative impact, which encourages creative and unconventional experiments.

Don't censor ideas early. The path to innovative marketing is generating a high volume of unconventional, even "bad," ideas. Most will fail, but the one or two that succeed can become massive multipliers for your brand, often requiring you to ask for forgiveness, not permission.

By enforcing a strict budget cap on any single commercial, Liquid Death operates a 'small bets' strategy. This minimizes the financial risk of any one piece of content flopping and allows for a higher volume of creative outputs, ensuring the ROI is massive when a video succeeds.

To ensure continuous experimentation, Coastline's marketing head allocates a specific "failure budget" for high-risk initiatives. The philosophy is that most experiments won't work, but the few that do will generate enough value to cover all losses and open up crucial new marketing channels.