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Why advertising needs to get better at navigating change.

In no time at all, everything has changed.

It was only a few short months ago, in December 2025 that the global communications giant Dentsu was predicting that the advertising industry was in line for sustained growth throughout 2026. Investment was set to grow faster than the global economy. That total adspend would hit $1 trillion for the first time later in the year. They’d done the research. They’d gathered the evidence. By all reasonable estimates, they were right to say what they said.

But just two months later, in February 2026, a US president who didn’t believe in foreign wars started a foreign war, and all of a sudden all bets were off.

By May, we had oil tankers trapped in the Strait of Hormuz, fuel prices rising, interest rates on the verge of being hiked, consumer spending compromised and economies hovering on the brink of what might turn out to be another global recession.

As things now stand at the time of writing, the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) is predicting nearly $50 billion in adspend being wiped out by sustained high oil prices in 2026, and a further $44 billion in 2027.

Already, the big agency groups are experiencing ‘uncertainty’ and ‘drag’ on their income. By the end of Q1 2026, Publicis Groupe’s Middle Eastern revenue was already down -5.1%, with a growing risk of ripple-out effects on their wider global business.

If we’ve learned one thing this year it is that future events don’t always follow on from the events of the present or the recent past. When there are unpredictable elements in the mix, things can, and often do, go somewhere else altogether. For all we know, WARC’s prediction of a downturn could turn out to be as much a hostage to fortune as was Dentsu’s promise of growth.

It could all blow over in a few weeks, and then it will be a whole different story.

But one thing holds true, whatever the world throws at us: we live in turbulent times.

In remarkably short order we’ve had Covid, war in Ukraine, tariffs and inflation. And now this.

The situation we’re facing in 2026 has implications for the sourcing, manufacture, pricing and sales of products and brands. It also has perhaps even bigger implications for marketing and advertising. As one of the easiest expenditures to cut in tough times, our industry is uniquely vulnerable.

You know, and I know, that cutting adspend in response to a crisis is shortsighted. But we also know that there are people out there who will roll their eyes at such a statement and say, Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?  This is despite the huge body of research collated by the IPA and others that proves the value of continued investment. Nevertheless, budget-cuts have happened and will continue to happen.

But where we go wrong, I think, is in seeing all this crazy turbulence going on around us and imagining that it’s somehow something new. Because it isn’t.

If you go back any amount of time, to any point in history, you’ll see all kinds of unexpected change: diseases, wars, civil unrest, infectious diseases and cost-of-living crises. In living memory you’ll see a couple of full-on World Wars. You’ll see technological revolutions. And you’ll see several total transformations of the entire media landscape.

Nevertheless, it is human nature to fall prey to what you might call the illusion of stillness. We look at the things we’ve become used to for the past few years, and we mistakenly imagine this is somehow the settled order of things. Then we’re surprised when we’re ambushed by events.

Change happens, and when it happens it poses challenges.

But the true challenge our industry faces right now is not how to manage this particular set of issues in these next few uncertain years. Instead, it’s how to build greater resilience and flexibility into our companies and into our mindsets, in the understanding that change always has been with us and always will be.

Some businesses understand this. Speaking to MMM Online, Publicis Groupe chief executive Arthur Sadoun says that repeated shocks to the system are beginning to instil in clients a familiarity with the art of navigating uncertainty.

But others try to control and minimise the impact of external events on their activities. As, for example, when car brands employ blocking technologies to prevent their ads appearing alongside any unexpected news content that might contain words like ‘crash’ or ‘injured’.

That kind of enterprise is always going to be doomed to failure. You can’t whitewash reality or wish it away. And consumers aren’t stupid: they join the dots. This is why media figures like Guardian Chief Advertising Officer Imogen Fox, speaking at the recent Campaign 360 media event, increasingly believe that advertisers and brands should learn, instead, to embrace turbulence.

Whatever the outcome of the Iran war and whatever its impact on global or regional trade and marketing, resilience and flexibility are skills we need to become more practiced and proficient in. We should deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. So that whenever and wherever the unexpected strikes next, we’ll be ready and able to harness its power and energy to take us forwards.

First published in Campaign Asia June 2026.