The Nerve

When we talk about building brands, many of us immediately think of things like logos, color palettes, typeface, taglines, imagery, and stories.

But don’t discount perhaps the most important ingredient of all:

Nerve.

It takes nerve to build a brand. Something that truly stands out. Something cut differently. Something slightly raw and eye-catching. Saying things people have never heard before.

It’s scary.

But without the nerve it takes to be bold and go against the ingrained part of us that needs to fit in in order to survive, a brand is just a skeleton without any insides. A body without a heartbeat.

I think this is the part that’s the hardest to talk about and understand in branding. It’s immeasurable and squishy, and you can’t really manufacture nerve like you can create a brand’s foundation and parts.

Think about it this way:

It took nerve for Apple to position itself as “for the crazy ones” and pick blatant fights with the largest computer company in the world at a time when it was the underdog.

It took nerve for Nike to back a football player whose name divided an entire sports franchise, and become a platform for his controversial message.

It took nerve for Patagonia to say no to co-branded merchandise with companies deemed “ecologically damaging,” and then later to transfer its ownership to nonprofit entities instead of going public.

And in our corner of the world, it took nerve for our friends at Foxtrot Company, a brokerage in Northern Virginia, to go all in on the military niche. To say, we’re not for everyone and we want to lean in as far as possible to that truth.

You think any of these companies had people in the room who felt iffy about these bold moves and made counter-arguments that were rationally sound?

You think the initial pitches sounded batshit crazy and like business suicide?

My guess is yeah.

Many of these examples are huge companies with huge brands.

But even the smallest among us will have choices to make that need nerve in order to build a brand that does its job right. 

Because that’s just it: A business isn’t a brand unless that brand stands out, on its own, and carries some kind of meaning above and beyond the practical. 

Don’t discount nerve’s role in beating out rationale to make that possible.