That’s all we make.
We can talk big, write funny constitutions, make up neat-o web sites but nail is absolutely no more or less than the ideas we generate for our clients.
If we make great ideas we are a great company.
If we make crappy ideas we are a crappy company.
And the only people at nail expected to come up with great ideas are the ones with functioning cerebral cortexes.
Many companies can’t match their larger competition’s sales force or R&D budget or distribution muscle. But in the pages of a magazine or in the brochure rack or on the Internet it is an even playing field.
And it’s here that big ideas will beat big budgets.
And it’s here that even a small company can begin to build a huge brand.
We call it Brand Magnification™ and we know it works because it has a TM after it.
And because we have seen the results make a growing list of clients downright giddy.
It’s easy to be unexpected.
But it doesn’t do anyone a whole lot of good if it’s not in service of something useful and relevant. Unexpected Relevance—the Holy Grail of effective communication.
And we don’t know how to do it.
No one does.
By definition, there is no logical, linear path to get to that magical, unexpected solution. But like pornography, you know it when you see it.
And we don’t stop until we see it (the solution that is).
An enormous waste of money.
The time and money spent trying to make consumers do or buy things is nothing short of breathtaking.
And of course they don’t care. They can’t. Not with over 2600 advertising messages bombarding them every day.
So we don’t do ads. If it looks, feels, sounds or smells like an ad, we pick the pen up and keep going.
Not because we think consumers are so dumb that we can deceive them. Precisely the opposite: we understand that consumers know exactly what we’re up to. They are thoroughly aware of the battle raging around them for their attention and wallets.
And we believe they would rather do business with someone who talks with them than someone who talks at them.
“Branding” does not mean slapping a logo on every available surface.
Because a company’s brand is not its logo. Brand, when all is said and done, is just another word for relationship. It’s the cumulative effect of every point of contact a person has with that company. Advertising is one of those points. But so is the packaging. And the web site. And a business card. And the trade show booth. And the on-hold music. And you get the point.
We believe that every one of these is an opportunity to magnify the brand.
Frequently, mediocre work is not the result of too little thought, but too much. Testing, committees, second-guessing, bureacracies—there is an endless list of forces generating a nearly undeniable gravitational pull toward the middle of the road.
If the middle of the road is so darn “safe,” how do you explain all the road kill?
There are plenty of agencies out there whose mission statement reduces to: give them what they want. These include some of the biggest and most profitable agencies in the world. This shouldn’t be surprising: there will never be a shortage of clients who enjoy being told that they’re right.
But we didn’t believe the business world needed more “yes” men. But we did think it could do with a few more “oooh wait, how about this?” men.
So rather than just give clients what they want, we chose to take the more difficult but ultimately more satisfying route of giving them what they need.
It’s the difference between being a partner and a vendor. nail is a passionate, dedicated, hard-working partner.
nail is frustrated, disgruntled, grumpy vendor.
And what’s up with the pretentious lower case “n?”
When we started the company, we questioned everything conventional marketing firms take for granted. Even whether we needed a name. After some thought, we decided that people needed a more convenient way to refer to us than “those guys who won’t leave us alone.”
So we conceded on the name front.
But frankly, it wasn’t terribly important what name we chose because we knew that like any brand, ultimately its meaning would be determined by what we did with it.
But we figured we might as well give it a bit of a head start. So...
A great idea is a nail: Sharp. Simple. Strong. An idea capable of penetrating apathy and connecting a consumer and a company in a strong, enduring way.
And a business that puts the right nails in the right places will build something extraordinary.
As for the “n” it all goes back to the early days when we were struggling and couldn’t afford those fancy upper case letters like all the big agencies have.
Each employee, each client, each vendor, each person poking around the web site is a cell in the organism that is nail. We hope that organism continues to grow into something unique and wonderful—and not a huge mutant jellyfish-like creature that lives in a swamp and subsists on lichen and slugs and terrifies the local children and on whom a rash of mysterious livestock deaths is blamed so that a posse of angry locals gathers and hunts us down with shotguns and cattle prods until we are cornered, terrified and alone knowing that we are soon to meet a brutish and painful end at the hard hands of those from whom all we craved was love or at least a hint of sweet human compassion...
But we digress.
Our sole purpose is to create great ideas that help build our clients’ brands and achieve their business goals. Each employee’s job is to do whatever it takes to make that happen. Each of us has different strengths and talents, but a great idea can come from anywhere, anyone can sprint to FedEx, anyone can pick up a ringing phone.
nail runs exclusively on renewable energy sources.
No one ever single-handedly picked up an overturned truck to get a paycheck. Extraordinary achievements require bigger motivations. Unless you happen to be one of those cool new robots that can read, you have passion and goals and aspirations.
nail should be a place where those abstract ideals can become concrete.
nail should be a place where trucks are constantly being picked up.
All the best constitutions have them.
So amend away...