Why it’s better to be sharp than brave
It’s time we put bravery to the sword.
Your average LinkedIn feed is bustling with advice about being brave and bold, but is that really good advice? Admittedly, we’ve been responsible for our fair share of noise on the subject – Dave even wrote D&AD’s creative bravery masterclass. The hypocrite. But, the more we think about it, the less ‘bravery’ feels like the right word.
Are we really so petrified of being unsuccessful that we need to summon some leonine courage before we’ll even try to grab people’s attention? Reeeeeally?
Are we being brave… or stupid?
Maybe ‘bravery’ is just shorthand for doing something different? It certainly took a degree of daring to be the first to try and ride a horse, circumnavigate the globe in a balloon, or eat an oyster. But, if that’s the case, courage implies a kind of unthinking disregard for consequences. A single-minded determination to achieve something. An ‘I-am-doing-this-because-I-am-going-to-do-it’ philosophy.
Sure, the endeavours above were fruitful in the end – but that guarantee wasn’t there at the start. At the first leap onto the stallion’s back, or the first gulp of gloopy oyster, nobody knew what was going to happen. As endless generations of weary grannies have told us: ‘there’s a fine line between brave and stupid’.
Doggedly pursuing a goal with no lingering thoughts about the merit of its achievement or its ultimate benefits is not, to us, a position worth putting forward. It would certainly be brave to fight Tyson Fury and Chuck Norris at the same time. But why would you want to do that?
And that’s the problem. Brave is vague. It leaves the door open for stupid. And it doesn’t force us to focus.
The alternative to bravery
We’re all just striving to do better work and get better results – but if bravery won’t get us there, what will?
Well, we could be sharper.
Sharp is smart. It’s acute, shrewd, cutting, penetrating, and perceptive. Alert and incisive. Sharp wouldn’t fight the legendary hardmen previously mentioned – sharp would probably start selling tickets to see their poor, ‘brave’ challenger get pummeled. Sharp would even save itself a front-row seat.
Sharp is critical and savvy and cunning. But, best of all, sharp is ruthless.
There’s no place for fluff and filler in creative strategy. And there’s no space in your audience’s brain to store ’10 key messages’ about your brand. We have to be ruthless about what we say and what we don’t. And that’s the beauty of sharpness.
You sharpen a sword by taking bits away, not adding them. This is what happens with the best ideas – you cut to the core of what makes them good. Anything extraneous is shorn because it muddies the waters and ultimately weakens the main idea, the substance, the guts.
With sharpness you’ll get to the guts of your brand. With bravery you’ll get your ass kicked.