Is Your Marketing Antifragile?
What’s the opposite of fragile? Really. How would the dictionary define it?
What do you come up with?
Durable?
Strong?
Nassim Taleb defines the opposite of fragile as antifragile: things: things that are made stronger through exposure to the elements.
A simple example here is a tree. Imagine a tree grown in a climate-controlled dome. You’re protecting the tree from strong wind gusts, hail storms, and rope swings. From the outside looking in, this tree is tall and beautiful with shimmering leaves, but the roots are shallow. When an unexpected event arrives, the dome-tree will likely snap and fall.
A tree exposed to wind develops stronger roots and denser wood, constantly responding to stress.
What does it mean to have marketing that’s antifragile? We define it in three ways:
1- Could your current strategies survive (not snap) if your top-producing tactics/channels (paid search, meta, organic) entirely disappeared? '
2- If a substitute or competitor appeared directly in your space tomorrow, would your customers bail?
3- Have you placed a small bet (10% of total marketing budget) in the last six months that didn’t work out?
A True Gut Check:
Do you have 1,000 “TRUE” followers of your business? Defined by Kevin Kelly as “Someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce.”
Quick Marketing Example:
Antifragile:
Companies with multiple sources of traffic, discovery, leads, fans, donors, and revenue.
Experimental budgets + failure: optionality. At any moment, a company with 1 million (true) followers and fans can pivot into new verticals or spin up new revenue streams. YouTube jumps the shark? Your audience is transferable.
Domino’s
Most mature restaurant chains tend to play it safe. Domino’s has taken a different approach, continuing to experiment with new ways for customers to order and receive their food.
Over the years, Domino’s has launched ideas like Emergency Pizza and Pinpoint Delivery, while expanding digital ordering across just about every platform imaginable.
Customers have been able to order through smart speakers, car infotainment systems, text messages, social platforms, the Domino’s app, and more. They’ve also continued experimenting with GPS-based technology to make delivery easier and more flexible.
Rather than relying on one successful way of doing things, Domino’s keeps testing what could work next.
Takeaway:
Run experiments with low downside high upside. Exposure to volatility is healthy. “You can take risks without exposing yourself to total ruin.”
Place small bets on the future you want to create.
There’s something called the Strategy Paradox: safe strategies rarely dominate, but they also rarely collapse. They tend to get stuck somewhere in the middle. On the other hand, you can take one massive risk and succeed wildly, or fail completely.
Antifragile marketing isn’t about correctly predicting what happens next. It’s about preparing for uncertainty.
Instead of asking, “What do we think will happen?” start asking:
“What range of futures could happen, and how do we survive and win across them?”
Then, start placing small bets.
Possible future: Search traffic continues to decline.
How do we win? Create content that lives natively on platforms like LinkedIn. Build an email list you own. Invest in landing pages and websites that can communicate with both people and LLMs. (Get GeoFli Lander!)
Possible future: People spend even more time inside individual platforms.
How do we win? Stop relying on getting everyone to click away. Experiment with platform-native content, especially video. Try authentic Q&As, short-form videos, educational content, and conversations designed specifically for the platforms where your audience already spends time.
Possible future: As more interactions become automated, people begin craving human interaction even more.
How do we win? Invest in the things automation can’t easily replace: in-person events, real human support, live conversations, and opportunities for customers to interact directly with your team.
You don’t need to know which of these futures will happen.
That’s the point.
Make small bets across multiple possible futures, learn from what happens, and invest more in what works. That way, when marketing inevitably changes again, your strategy doesn’t depend on everything going according to plan.