Planning for Certainty Is the Real Risk in 2026.
That may sound harsh, but for many marketers across Asia and Australia it is simply the commercial reality of 2026 - by Kauri J. Ballard
Across Asia and Australia, marketing plans signed off just a few months ago are being quickly overtaken by events. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has reintroduced volatility into global energy markets. Oil prices are feeding through into transport and production costs. Inflationary pressure is resurfacing unevenly across the region. Governments are intervening in ways that directly affect how businesses operate and how consumers spend.
In the Philippines, a state of national energy emergency has been declared, alongside fuel restrictions and a four-day working week in parts of government. Sri Lanka has reintroduced QR-based fuel rationing. Japan has begun releasing national oil stockpiles. South Korea has mobilised a cross-government economic response. China has stepped in to stabilise domestic fuel prices. Australia is actively preparing for supply disruption through coordinated national planning.
These are not edge cases, they are signals. And for marketers, they expose a structural weakness in how organisations plan and take action in uncertain conditions.
The illusion of a stable plan
Most marketing plans are built as if the future will resemble the recent past, with minor adjustments. Assumptions are made about demand, pricing, media performance and competitive behaviour. These assumptions are reasonable at the point of planning but they are inherently fragile.
They rely on conditions that no longer hold. When energy costs rise sharply, distribution becomes more expensive. When inflation increases, pricing decisions change and consumer purchasing power shifts. When governments intervene, entire categories can behave differently overnight. But the plan? That rarely adapts so just become less accurate over time.
Most organisations continue to measure performance against that original plan. Variance is treated as underperformance. Budgets are adjusted reactively. Marketing is asked to explain outcomes that were shaped by forces far beyond its control. This is not a measurement issue, it is a planning issue built on the assumption that outcomes can be predicted with precision.
What marketers can and cannot influence
The first step towards more resilient marketing is clarity. Marketing controls creative, media investment, targeting and timing. It can influence demand and it can shape preference but it does not control fuel prices, supply chain disruption, interest rates or government policy.
Analytic Partners’ ROI Genome demonstrate that marketing contributes between 10% and 50% of business performance depending on the context, with the majority of growth driven by non-marketing factors such as macroeconomic conditions, availability and broader consumer trends .
That reality has always existed. What has changed is the scale and speed at which those external factors are moving, meaning a single marketing plan is no longer enough.
From prediction to scenario planning
This is where modelling takes on a different role. Historically, modelling has been used to explain past performance i.e. which channels worked, what drove ROI and how campaigns performed. That remains useful but is no longer sufficient.
In volatile conditions, the real value of modelling lies in its ability to simulate multiple scenarios. Not to predict a single outcome, but to quantify a range of possible outcomes and the trade-offs between them so...
What happens if fuel prices rise another 15% and distribution costs follow?
What happens if consumer demand softens in metropolitan areas but holds in regional markets?
What happens if a competitor responds to cost pressure by reducing price or increasing promotional intensity?
It would be great to imagine these as theoretical questions but they’re not, they’re active dynamics across APAC markets right now.
The purpose of modelling is to bring structure to that uncertainty and allow marketers to explore the consequences of different conditions before they fully materialise so that they can plan responses accordingly. You cannot forecast what will happen in this environment, but you can prepare for what could happen.
How to build a dynamic planning capability
This, as ever, requires a shift in thinking and process.
First, planning needs to move beyond a single view of the future. The annual plan cannot remain static while the environment changes around it, but nor should it require rebuilding every time conditions shift. Instead, organisations need a stable modelling foundation that allows different scenarios to be explored as conditions evolve, applying consistent logic to new situations rather than reworking the model itself. The focus shifts from trying to get the plan right, to understanding how the business will respond under different conditions; fuel costs, pricing pressure, demand shifts or supply constraints. This is not about constant change, but about being prepared; using scenario planning both in periods of volatility and as a way to de-risk decisions before they are made.
Second, those external forces need to be built into decision-making, not just acknowledged. Too often, factors such as inflation, competitor activity or supply constraints are recognised in discussion but remain disconnected from how plans are actually evaluated. In the current environment, that gap becomes a risk. These variables are not peripheral, they shape performance. A robust model brings them into the core of scenario planning, allowing organisations to understand not just what is happening, but how those forces interact with marketing and commercial decisions.
Third, scenario planning needs to move from theory into action. It is not enough to recognise uncertainty or model external forces; organisations need to define how they would respond under different conditions. Rather than asking what will happen, the focus shifts to what could happen, and what decisions follow. This creates a set of pre-considered responses that can be activated quickly as conditions evolve, reducing reaction time and allowing marketing to operate with greater control in uncertain environments.
Our approach is to begin with early briefing, followed by modelling multiple scenarios before plans are finalised. Those scenarios are compared, refined, and then revisited as conditions evolve. This is not done in isolation, but informed by a broad base of cross-market evidence, built over time and tested through periods of disruption. During COVID, for example, scenario modelling was informed by patterns emerging across different markets, allowing responses to be shaped by what was already unfolding elsewhere, not just what had already happened locally.
This is a fundamentally different discipline from traditional forecasting. It accepts that precision is not possible and instead prioritises preparedness, using data, experience and structured modelling to understand how different conditions are likely to play out, and how the business should respond.
Connecting marketing to the wider business
There is an additional implication; as scenario planning become more dynamic, the boundary between marketing and the rest of the business becomes less defined. Pricing decisions affect demand. Distribution constraints affect availability. Macroeconomic conditions affect both. Marketing interacts with all of these factors, but cannot be evaluated in isolation from them. This is why a commercial analytics lens is increasingly important.
Rather than focusing solely on marketing inputs and outputs, commercial analytics integrates marketing with financial, operational and external data. It recognises that performance is the result of interaction between multiple drivers. This allows for more meaningful questions to be asked; not simply which channel delivered the highest return, but how marketing is amplifying or offsetting broader market forces. Not just what happened, but what is likely to happen under different conditions.
This is where the value of partnership becomes critical. Scenario planning is only as strong as the data, the model, and the expertise behind it. With a consistent modelling approach grounded in long-term, cross-category evidence, organisations are able to apply proven intelligence to new scenarios as they arise, rather than rebuild their understanding each time conditions change. The result is not a prediction of what will happen, but a clearer view of how the business is likely to respond under different conditions, and which levers to pull as those conditions emerge.
Confidence in uncertain conditions
For CMOs, this shift has a practical benefit. It changes the nature of conversations with leadership.
In a static planning model, deviations from the marketing plan are often difficult to explain. In a dynamic model, those deviations are anticipated, quantified and contextualised, which builds credibility. It demonstrates that marketing understands the commercial environment, not just its own activity within it. And it provides a clearer link between marketing decisions and business outcomes, even when those outcomes are influenced by external factors. In a period of heightened scrutiny on budgets and performance, that clarity matters.
A different approach to the future
For good or ill, volatility is no longer an exception. It is becoming a defining feature of the operating environment. Geopolitical instability, economic pressure and shifting consumer behaviour are not temporary disruptions. They are ongoing conditions that require a different approach to planning.
For marketers, this means letting go of the idea that the future can be forecast once and then executed against. The future cannot be predicted with confidence in this environment, but it can be actively managed through scenario planning.
The real risk is not that predictions might be wrong, but that they remain unchanged after everything else has moved.
If your plans are still built on a fixed view of the future, it may be time to start modelling what happens when that future changes.