The Dunning-Kruger Traps in Modern Marketing Teams
By Filip Ivankovic
Director, New Rebellion
Filip has led enterprise marketing functions, managed a $40M budget and delivered 30% growth on a $200M base. An ex-CMO with experience across agency, client and vendor roles he understands where marketing delivers and where it gets stuck.
New Rebellion was built to create something sharper. A model that connects strategy to delivery, fast.
Content Overview
Why False Confidence Leads to Poor Strategy and Stalled Growth
“They seem confident so they must know what they're doing.”
You’ve likely seen it before.
Junior marketers feel they've nailed the brief because their posts are scheduled. Mid-level managers create reports without clear insights. Senior leaders struggle to adapt and turn to politics instead of accountability.
This isn't just about intelligence. Often it's the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's a mismatch between confidence and skill that quietly damages businesses more than many leaders realise.
What the Dunning-Kruger Effect Actually Is
In simple terms people with less experience often think they're better than they are. Meanwhile skilled people tend to underestimate themselves.
For example a global BetterBriefs study found 80% of marketers believed their briefs were excellent yet only 10% of agencies agreed.
In Australia this gap is clear in wasted digital advertising spend. In 2023 businesses wasted an estimated A$6.15 billion, which accounts for over 40% of total category investment. Marketers overestimated how effective their campaigns would be or did not realise the further opportunity available through refinement.
When confidence doesn't match skills the effects are clear.
- Teams confuse being busy with being productive.
- Buzzwords cover up uncertainty causing confusion.
- Internal politics protect weak strategies causing poor results.
Confidence feels like clarity. It’s not.
Misjudged skill leads to wasted spend and stalled growth.
How It Shows Up in Teams
In marketing teams the Dunning-Kruger effect looks like this:
- Campaigns run late but everyone insists they’re busy
- Budgets are spent but no one can explain the return
- Data is shared but clear decisions are rare
In agencies, quick promotions and high turnover inflate titles. Enthusiasm often outweighs experience, especially in smaller service-based businesses with limited hiring depth. Frequent churn makes it hard to replace talent quickly or well.
Across the board, there’s a disconnect between clients and agencies. Each side believes they’re doing a good job. Agencies think they’re adding value. Clients think they’re being clear. But the work tells a different story.
In 2025, TrinityP3 found that 87% of Australian pitches offered no fee and two thirds required unpaid speculative work. Many were led by marketers with limited delivery experience, which only added to the frustration.
When everyone is confident but no one is aligned, waste creeps in quietly. What looks like progress is often just a well-dressed misfire.
When skill gaps hide behind confidence, everyone loses.
What looks like momentum is often just noise.
What It Costs
Overconfidence isn’t just costly. It slows down growth.
- Businesses lose clarity because key questions aren’t asked
- Momentum stalls as leaders fix mistakes instead of building
- Trust weakens when other teams stop listening
- Talented people leave due to poor leadership
Consider Australia’s COVIDSafe app. Leaders spent $21 million promoting it but it found only 17 contacts that manual tracing hadn’t already found. It looked sound on paper but failed in execution, prompting a rare and unusually blunt government media release.
In marketing teams, the same pattern plays out more quietly. More than 40% of digital media buying is wasted on low-quality inventory.
Even high-performing campaigns miss growth without regular review. If no one is questioning the numbers, growth quietly slips away.
Overconfidence looks like progress. It’s not.
Most waste doesn’t look like waste until it’s too late.
Why Infrastructure Often Breaks
A common frustration in marketing teams is poor execution of complex infrastructure. It shows up when someone confidently signs off on a new CDP or analytics tool but doesn’t fully understand what is required to make it work.
When the person driving the decision lacks real depth things break. You get tools that do not connect to the right data. You get workflows that look good on slides but collapse in production. You get teams and suppliers that operate in silos because no one owns the system end to end.
The problem isn’t always the technology. It’s the misplaced belief that knowing the buzzwords means you know how to build it. Businesses then burn through time and money with little to show for it.
This happens internally when teams overestimate their ability to integrate and implement systems. It also happens externally when suppliers deliver a shiny solution without fully understanding the client’s operating reality.
The result is complexity without capability and a system that never quite works as promised.
It’s not the tech that breaks. It’s the thinking behind it.
Tools don’t fix strategy. Ownership and depth do.
How to Fix It
Confidence draws attention. Competence delivers results. To close the gap:
- Build a culture that values outcomes not optics
- Use audits or advisors to surface blind spots
- Invest in deep skills not just wide exposure
- Reward those who ask smart questions not just those with sharp slides
Most teams don’t need more dashboards. They need better decisions.
Leadership Blind Spots and Team Dynamics
Good leaders recognise when confidence outweighs skill and course correct early.
- Watch for dominant voices who overestimate their knowledge
- Create space for quieter experts to speak
- Understand that confidence often increases fastest when knowledge is shallow
TrinityP3’s State of the Pitch identified that pitches run by less experienced marketers are more chaotic and less respected by agencies. The same happens inside teams. When those guiding strategy do not have the depth to challenge assumptions the whole function suffers.
Confidence talks. Competence delivers.
The best teams lead with clarity, not noise.
The Bottom Line
Confidence might win meetings. Competence wins markets.
So what’s the real cost of unchecked confidence?
The real risk isn’t just wasted budget. It’s wasted time, trust and talent. When poor decisions go unchallenged, strategy drifts, performance stalls and momentum quietly disappears.
The Dunning-Kruger effect isn’t about ego. It’s about impact. When the least experienced speak with the most certainty, execution suffers. Infrastructure breaks. Performance flatlines. Momentum never sticks.
Dashboards won’t fix that. Neither will louder voices. What does is sharper thinking, better questions and real expertise behind the wheel. The best marketing teams aren’t the busiest or the boldest. They test smarter, learn faster and turn clarity into outcomes.
If any of this sounds familiar, it’s probably worth a conversation.
Book an informal chat and let’s see if we can help you cut through the noise.
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We help businesses break through outdated thinking, build smarter strategies and lead with confidence. No fluff, no wasted time. Just insight-driven action that delivers measurable growth.
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