Gonzo
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Saturday 21 February 2009 00:33

Via Fontanel: Gonzo. I've probably been too long
too close to the advertising industry to look at
ads in a way a normal member of the general public
would, and I can only imagine how things would be
for someone who's been too long too close to the
porn industry, but I definitely agree with Gordon
when he says "Gonzo’s rise is assured, not because
it’s good, but because its ideal consumer isn’t the
consumer, it’s the brand manager". I don't even
remember if I ranted about it before, but more and
more ads are just the mood boards related to ads.
Mood boards used to be only a tool that was
internally used by an advertising agency to get the
members of the creative team to communicate about
and in the end agree about what kind of mood a
brand had to communicate. It could involve shooting
some rough graphic or video material or throwing
something together with stock photos but when that
was done that was just the beginning. In a
brainstorm in a couple of seconds someone can come
up with the image of skydiving and the other
members of the team then instantly know what that
stands for and how it defines what they are doing.
But then the whole mood had to be translated to a
concept and an implementation, which probably
didn't include skydiving, but something that has
the same mood but makes more sense when you think
about it longer than in a brainstorm session. But
today it looks like the mood board is done in high
resolution and then just used as the ad, without
translating it to a concept and implementing it.
Also because the web gives the freedom to create
your own formats you don't even have to do any
translation to make it fit in for example a 30
second TC. If your mood board is a 30 minute video,
just dump it online, no need to translate it to
something that makes it a good 30 second TC. It's
like George W. Bush's speeches in which he keeps
just saying things like "I'm here to tell you
that...", or "I'm here to reassure you..."; and
that is how he does that. It's stating the briefing
and not bothering to try to translate the briefing
into something compelling. People involved with
briefings, or the brand managers judging the mood
boards, do know whether they like it or not, but
probably forget that the general public isn't
interested in some high level step in the creative
proces, and needs a translation. While a book
explaining how to write good jokes can be very
good, that doesn't mean it must be very funny. And
while a mood board can define a brand, it doesn't
communicate the brand to the general public, but
just to the brand manager. Who is then
peer-reviewed by other brand managers who don't get
it and maybe even given some awards by the industry
who doesn't care if it's the award for best mood
board or best ad. And this is only just the
beginning... by Roland van Ipenburg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ipenburg/blog/posts/work/2009/02/21/gonzo/