Conviction is Free talk @ ADC

Conviction is free.

I say it a lot, and I’ve realised it’s only half true—and this is what I told the audience at the ADC conference last week. 

Let me break it down.

Conviction won’t cost you a penny. But it does cost you something: it costs you approval.

The moment you commit to a point of view, some people won’t like it—a colleague, an investor or a slice of your market. But that isn’t a side effect: it’s how it works. If nobody could disagree with your brand, nobody will remember it either.

So most businesses do the maths and decide approval is the more expensive thing to lose. They gather opinions, and sand off the edges. They add one more stakeholder, one more round, one more “can we just soften this?” We’ve all been there. And it’s a sorry state of bleuuuuggh-eige.

Consensus feels free. But it’s actually the most expensive thing in branding.

Because you pay for it in media spend, shouting louder because you look like everyone else. You pay for it in sales, convincing people one at a time of something your brand should have told them in a glance. And you pay for it later, in the rebrand that undoes all the bleuuuuggh-eige.

Conviction is paid upfront, in a currency most leaders have plenty of but spend reluctantly: the willingness to be disliked by the wrong people.

That’s a bargain, folks!

The best founders I’ve worked with understand this. They listen widely and decide narrowly. They hold strong opinions loosely enough to be persuaded, but tightly enough not to be watered down.

They know a brand isn’t built by avoiding objections, it’s built by choosing which ones you can live with.

So next time someone asks whether you can afford to be brave, I’d recommend you smugly flip the question. Can you actually afford to be forgettable?

Cat How is Founder & ECD at branding agency HOW+HOW. She lives in Los Angeles.