Episode Transcript
Don Mock 0:19
All right, Episode 83. We are back and we’re back with J. Gonzo. What’s up, dude?
J. Gonzo 0:24
Not much, man. Just had a great lunch and doing this now.
Don Mock 0:27
Yeah, exactly. Tacos.
J. Gonzo 0:29
Yep, absolutely.
Don Mock 0:30
Delicious. What did you get, which two tacos?
J. Gonzo 0:32
Brisket and fried chicken.
Don Mock 0:33
Okay, I always go fish and fried chicken.
J. Gonzo 0:35
Yeah, just like my Nana used to make.
Don Mock 0:38
Nice, nice.
J. Gonzo 0:38
I always love checking out Mexican food in other cities. It’s interesting.
Don Mock 0:42
Well, yes. I’ll play neutral and say yes, I agree with you. That it’s interesting. In some places, it’s not what we would consider Mexican food, and that’s what makes it fun and exciting.
J. Gonzo 0:52
Yeah, it’s as Mexican as pizza in America.
Don Mock 0:56
All right. All right. What are we gonna talk about today? What’s on tap?
J. Gonzo 0:59
I thought we were just gonna talk about what we love about advertising.
Don Mock 1:01
What we love about advertising. All right, that’s a nice, broad subject for us. I’ll take notes on this. Let’s start with you. Since you’re the guest, what do you love about advertising?
J. Gonzo 1:10
Um, I love that when it’s good, when it’s really good – when it’s at its best, it can contribute to the culture. I think things like –
Don Mock 1:21
Like “Be like Mike”?
J. Gonzo 1:22
“Just do it.”
Don Mock 1:23
It’s funny, we immediately both go to Nike.
J. Gonzo 1:25
Or “think different” or any of those, I think. Yeah, at its best it can contribute to culture.
Don Mock 1:31
What about like, “where’s the beef?” And those types of things. “Got milk.”
J. Gonzo 1:37
Kind of culture phenomenon?
Don Mock 1:38
Well, it definitely permeated into like, Oh, now we’ve got funny T-shirts and bad puns and things like that. Is that good advertising? Or is that – ?
J. Gonzo 1:48
With that, I always I talk about this campaign that Lee Jeans did in the early 90s. It was really… they were just getting their butts handed to them by Levi. So what they did is these really gritty kind of quirky black and white commercials with Buddy Lee. Remember those, they had a little Buddy Lee bobblehead in them?
Don Mock 2:07
I remember that.
J. Gonzo 2:07
Cool music that had that kind of like –
Don Mock 2:09
I don’t remember the tagline, though.
J. Gonzo 2:11
Was it like Helmut Newtonesque? He’s the guy who shot Wicked Gaming Music video, right? Isn’t Helmut Newton?
Don Mock 2:16
I feel like… Chris Isaac?
J. Gonzo 2:17
Yeah, exactly. Like so. You know, a lot of fashion photographers were making music videos then. Honestly out of that school, you get David Fincher, who then starts making movies. So it was that feel to these Buddy Lee commercials. And at the end of the day, everyone loved the commercials. And Levi sales went up, because they were so cool that people thought they were, obviously, Levi commercials.
Don Mock 2:42
Do you remember the tagline of that campaign, because I do not remember?
J. Gonzo 2:45
I don’t remember the tagline. But I just remember, they definitely felt like Levi commercials. Levi’s had built their brand around being irreverent and cool. And all this stuff. And Buddy Lee – or Lee Jeans – had been a little more utilitarian. Like if Redwing shoes suddenly started making edgy ads. They’re basically just doing advertising for Nike now because Nike has corner of the market on that emotional space.
Don Mock 3:06
Totally.
J. Gonzo 3:06
Whereas Redwing boots are about being functional. They promise two very different things. There you go, there’s one of the things I love about advertising, is that you can own an emotional quadrant of feelings in your sector, your business sector. I always say IBM and Macintosh ostensibly both do the same thing.
Don Mock 3:30
Correct.
J. Gonzo 3:30
They sell computers.
Don Mock 3:32
Yes.
J. Gonzo 3:32
However –
Don Mock 3:33
You’re gonna sound like Simon Sinek right now, right?
J. Gonzo 3:34
No, no. Macintosh – or, Apple – says, “Isn’t this cool? Look how cool this is.” IBM says, “Look how smart you are.” Because one one is a playing against or is indulging people – like people who want to build their own computers and put their own machines together. It’s all look how smart you are, look how great you can be. And the other one is just about, almost a fasion message.
Don Mock 4:00
I was gonna say. Almost fashion.
J. Gonzo 4:01
Yep. It’s just like, look how cool it is to have this thing. And look how fun this is.
Don Mock 4:04
Totally.
J. Gonzo 4:05
One is selling enjoyment and one is selling intellect, and they’re very different messages. So you can own parts of that. If Apple ever did something that was all about, like, oh, you can customize your apple from the ground up, you can get on there and put your processing, visual processor –
Don Mock 4:18
Build your own Mac.
J. Gonzo 4:19
If you could build your own Mac, like they would just… IBM sales would go up. I feel like they would. But that’s what I love about advertising. I love that. What I love about being in advertising is you’re into psychology, you’re into brain science. Because ultimately, our job is just to sway decision making.
Don Mock 4:39
Well, one of the things I say quite frequently is “the power of persuasion.” If we’re gonna keep this Apple train rolling, it’s, “Hey, here’s this magical little box that you can put in your pocket and you can put 1000 songs on there.” They call it the iPod. How cool is that? Right and it was like, “Huh, I didn’t know I needed that until you told me I needed that.” And it was like, That’s interesting. And then Apple comes out and goes, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. You can’t have 1000 songs. You need 10,000 songs.” And we’re like, “Well, the what – ?
J. Gonzo 5:11
They just tapped in the arms race mentality of America.
Don Mock 5:13
Sure as hell, I need 10,000 songs. Then it was “Oh, wait a minute. No, dude, you know what you need? You need every song ever written in the history of ever.”
J. Gonzo 5:23
Ever recorded. And access to it.
Don Mock 5:25
It was like, “You’re damn right. I do.” So I mean, that interesting power of persuasion.
J. Gonzo 5:29
But what it is, is you’re selling the solution. You’re not even selling the solution. You’re selling the result of the solution.
Don Mock 5:37
Remember that initial campaign, too?
J. Gonzo 5:39
Oh, yeah. The sillhouette’s?
Don Mock 5:40
It was the sillhouette’s.
J. Gonzo 5:41
Yeah, great.
Don Mock 5:42
Brilliant, right? Because it was people dancing.
J. Gonzo 5:44
It was a catchy song to begin with. Catchy current song and it was personified without… it has that that masking effect. It wasn’t too specific, that anyone could put themselves in there because they were silhouettes.
Don Mock 5:57
Yeah, exactly.
J. Gonzo 5:58
I’m sure you’ve talked about iconography before, where the more simple you get, the more broad the appeal is.
Don Mock 6:02
Totally.
J. Gonzo 6:03
The more precise you get –
Don Mock 6:05
Mm,hmm. Universal symbols.
J. Gonzo 6:05
Universality by being simple. The universality, the access to it, the fun of it all. It is that adage of, “People don’t want to buy drills, they want round holes.” You know what I mean? So you got to figure out, what is the round hole that they want?
Don Mock 6:21
It’s an interesting way of putting it. I like that.
J. Gonzo 6:22
Yeah, that’s not mine. I stole that from someone. I mean, I’ve heard it other places. So I did an ad campaign for Children’s Hospital. And they had this great history. So like, is their brand promise the history of of innovation? Or is it state of the art healthcare? Is it the caring, the hands on, the the high touch… but at the end of the day… a lot of children’s hospitals, emotionally manipulative. They show a lot of bald, sad children, play some Sarah McLaughlin, and you’re like, “Oh, man.” But eventually, you get desensitized to that kind of message. It’s also a race to the bottom, because no one wants to think about their kid with cancer.
Don Mock 7:00
No.
J. Gonzo 7:00
Even the cancer parents don’t want to think about their kid with cancer. They want to know they’re in good hands. But at the end of the day, what a children’s hospital is selling is healthy children. They want you back to normal. So we did a great campaign with them, where we actually showed a bunch of kids just doing ordinary things. A commercial like a kid learning to tie a shoe, a kid learning to ride a bike, one playing soccer.
Don Mock 7:19
Sick kids getting back to normal.
J. Gonzo 7:20
The kid playing soccer had a grapefruit-sized tumor in her brain for a few months that they took out. The kid riding his bike lived three months without a heart in his chest.
Don Mock 7:32
What? What does that even mean?
J. Gonzo 7:34
They hooked him up to machines. They took out his bad heart while they waited for a donor. He had no heart in his chest for three months, for 90 some odd days. I can’t remember the exact. So you show the the ordinariness of these moments like when you ride a bike. Then you backfill it with this story. But again, at the end of the day, you want to see the healthy child and go, “that’s where I want my kid to be.” So if you’re selling the hole, show people benefiting from having used the drill, don’t show the drill. I mean, again, people don’t want drills, they want round holes.
Don Mock 8:04
There’s an interesting aspiration of advertising that maybe isn’t necessarily as reflected in design – if I was to split the two. I use the example all the time of weight loss, and the category of weight loss. We’ve done a fair amount of pet food packaging, and one of the dog food packages is weight management. Fido a little husky. So the interesting power of persuasion, and where designing these advertising sometimes is… when you think about weight loss, it’s always “Hey, I’m holding up a giant pair of pants I used to wear” or hey, it’s “I’m in a bikini” or “I’m looking good on the beach.” It’s aspirational of, “This is what I can look like.” I don’t look like that, but I want to look like that.
J. Gonzo 8:48
Do you show Fido with a big collar?
Don Mock 8:50
No, no. What I was gonna say was, when you’re purchasing for yourself, it’s aspirational. It’s oh, I want to I like that Apple ad, I want to I want to rock the iPod, too. I’m dating myself. The silhouettes as we talked about.
J. Gonzo 9:02
Yeah, exactly. I want that kind of fun.
Don Mock 9:03
But then for the pet food packaging, when you’re purchasing for others, you always show chunky dogs. You show husky dogs. Not husky the breed, but big, old, thick dogs. And it’s like, “Oh, yeah, you know, Lassie does look like that back of the house. Maybe we should buy this instead.”
J. Gonzo 9:21
People are a little more objective about what they’re doing as opposed to the emotional connection you need with someone.
Don Mock 9:27
But the psychology of advertising.
J. Gonzo 9:29
That’s a B2B message though, at that point, right? Because you’re now selling to a consumer, but not the person who’s going to consume it. That is almost a B2B where you have to show more efficacy than you have to show –
Don Mock 9:40
Let me ask you this. Going on a quick little tangent. 20 years ago, hardcore B2B, B2C. There were very clear lines. It was very clear delin… Do you still feel like B2B and B2C is still a thing? Because I keep hearing more about H2H. Have you heard about H2H?
J. Gonzo 9:57
No, no.
Don Mock 9:57
It’s all human to human, because at the end of the day, we’re all consumers, we’re all purchasers. Whether you’re the bean counter or in procurement of a large, gigantic corporation, you are not the corporation. You are still a person who is purchasing. So I don’t know, any spur of the moment thoughts on that sort of interesting –
J. Gonzo 10:15
The H2H is my from the hip –
Don Mock 10:19
Is it more advertising BS or – ?
J. Gonzo 10:21
My from the hip response is that, that’s probably true. Even when you’re going B2B, you’re trying to elicit some kind of emotional response. We’ve talked about this before. People make emotional decisions. All people, all the time. That’s how it works.
Don Mock 10:32
Malcolm Gladwell, Blink.
J. Gonzo 10:33
But I feel like the – or Daniel Pink’s Whole New Mind is a really good resource for that, too. A lot of great FMRI science, talks about that. But I feel like… I think…
Don Mock 10:46
But advertising B2B versus B2C… is it really that different of a strategy anymore?
J. Gonzo 10:51
I mean, I guess it depends on what you’re doing. On a case by case. I think things are just distinctively B2B. I did a bunch of work for this tech company that never had… it was more profit driven because you were selling. They were facilitator – God, I can’t even explain how they did this. So they were tele-technology, or telecommunications technology bundlers, essentially, that use the strength of how many people were selling beneath them to collectively bargain to get better deals. So you as an agent –
Don Mock 11:25
It’s like a co-op.
J. Gonzo 11:25
Kind of, yeah. You as an agent can never go to AT&T and get the deal I can, because I’ve got 40 agents that work with me. So I have negotiation leverage.
Don Mock 11:34
A lot of internet providers are like thay, too.
J. Gonzo 11:36
Their messaging was talking to agents. Basically, it’s all about profit margins, and spiffs, and all these other perks and stuff like that. And then talking to… there is no consumer. But you’re also creating materials for them to then take to the consumers. But their consumers are also businesses. They’re selling to schools and hospitals and things like that. They’re trying to like go, “Hey, I can hook you up with –
Don Mock 11:37
Better rates but you still have the power of AT&T or whatever.
J. Gonzo 11:39
So not only was B2B, but it was like B2B2B. I think that not having any kind of public face, because there is no… at that point, you don’t have quite the competition. You’ve got a real qualified audience, too. You’ve got people who are so immersed. I mean, these are the tech managers who run the facilities, who run the tech for the building that Intel’s in or whatever. They’re a qualified audience. Again, it’s an emotional decision. But I think that, when you’re talking that qualified an audience, there’s a lot more shorthand that can happen. I think that their pain points are extremely different. A lot of times with B2C, you have to be a little broader. You might actually have to do a lot more work being educational, just to explain to them some of the basics. So I feel qualifying an audience… I think a qualified audience is B2B. I think an unqualified audience is B2C.
Don Mock 12:54
Interesting.
J. Gonzo 12:54
It’s a rarity that you find an audience that is completely savvy to some aspect. Some aspect of your advertising, marketing, branding, whatever is going to be educational. If you’re doing anything beyond something that everyone understands. If you’re selling burgers, everyone understands burgers. That’s fine, but if you do anything even remote –
Don Mock 13:13
Who are ubiquitous brands. You don’t have to explain what Coca Cola is. Even if Coca Cola creates a new soft drink, you don’t need to explain what that is.
J. Gonzo 13:20
Yeah, how colas is work or anything.
Don Mock 13:21
You might just go flavor trigger. It’s this…”
J. Gonzo 13:24
Everyone thinks they understand advertising and marketing. But how much of your job would you say is educational, where you just have to bring clients up to speed with brand promise, brand pillars?
Don Mock 13:31
I would say a tremendous aspect of… more so now than there ever has been. I don’t know if that’s a byproduct of –
J. Gonzo 13:40
Everyone’s a business now?
Don Mock 13:41
Yeah, everyone’s a business now. Or just lack of formal training coming out of XYZ school. You know, it’s really interesting. That’s not to say that our clients or clients in general, aren’t educated. I’m not saying clients are inadequate.
J. Gonzo 13:56
They’ll come up, they’ll become Marketing Manager on the client side. They work their way up through the accounting department or something. They don’t have any marketing background at all. They were just earners as their accounting department or in charge of like concessions or something. Suddenly, they’re the president in charge of marketing. So they have no marketing background. I would say, when I was a creative director, about 30% of my job was just educating clients to understand the metrics for success and the mechanics of success, at that point.
Don Mock 14:19
Well, that also helps explain why we do the strategies that we do. Why you write the messages that you do. Why you do the visuals that you do. It’s not just, “Hey, isn’t this cool?” It’s, “Here’s why this is relevant to what you’re..”
J. Gonzo 14:34
Cool is always a byproduct.
Don Mock 14:36
Also sometimes you have to educate. “Now, this ad or this design isn’t actually for you. It’s for your consumers who are XYZ, this and that.” There’s a lot of subjectivity, because as you mentioned –
J. Gonzo 14:49
I would say there’s no subjectivity, I think that it feels like subjectivity and it feels like magic to the marketing directors or the clients that you have to deal with.
Don Mock 14:57
No, I’m saying the education. Sometimes you have to educate them as to why you don’t want to be subjective. Oh, I like purple or whatever.
J. Gonzo 15:05
Again, one of the things I love about – coming back to our subject – one of the things I do love about this business, is getting someone who doesn’t have – like any client – who doesn’t have a firm grasp of marketing, advertising, design. Where the differences are with the overlaps are. Getting them educated to the point where we’re all pulling in the same direction now. I get them to clearly define a target so that our work can be measured in efficacy to hitting said target.
Don Mock 15:27
Absolutely.
J. Gonzo 15:28
We have a clear metric of success. We’re all pulling in the same direction. And sometimes – just sometimes – we actually hit that target. Our job is to move the needle for the client.
Don Mock 15:38
Absolutely. Well, we’ve joked forever that if advertising was a guarantee, there’d be no such thing as the stock market.
J. Gonzo 15:57
Yeah, absolutely.
Don Mock 15:44
And it’s funny when people are like, “Huh, what? How can you guar…?” I can’t guarantee anything. We can lead everybody to exactly where they needed to go. I don’t know if they’re gonna push the button. We can give every reason. Are you really that much better than an ad? Nothing kills a bad product like greatt advertising.
J. Gonzo 16:00
There’s plenty of good products that have good advertising, that just somehow don’t connect. The cultural zeitgeist. Changes between conception and execution. Something new and some weird other cultural thing happens where no one wants to be involved. I mean, look at the McD LT comes out at a time when fast food packaging just gets completely under the scrutiny of the American public. They could have never foreseen that this weird fringy Greenpeace movement from 20 years earlier, mid 80s, or I guess, early 90s, early was suddenly gonna get so entrenched in a generation of people… that when they have this McD LT, that has like, twice the styrofoam of a regular burger, that that’s when America as a whole decided to go like, “Yeah, maybe we don’t put burgers in non biodegradable packaging.” Maybe it’s not twice what it used to be. That’s what kills that product. Not that it wasn’t a good product. Not that it wasn’t tasty, or any of the things. Again, it all looked good on paper. But the entire culture shifted in a way where was no longer relevant.
Don Mock 16:57
All right, let’s flip the script. Not to totally interrupt. What don’t you like about advertising?
J. Gonzo 17:02
Oh, man. The things that… I guess part of it is, I hate being forced to be working against my own best – or work against the client’s own best – interest. When you presented your argument. Clearly, I brought my 30 years of experience to bear on a project. I’m like, Look, this is how this is going to work. Trust me. I’ve been doing this a while. And they just flippantly go, “No, but I want to emulate this other company.” You’re like, “Well, that company is already doing that. So all you’re gonna be doing is advertising.” I used to work for a a billionaire, who own a bunch of businesses, and he would start up businesses on a whim and just, “Oh, I’m going to get involved in…” He was making golf clubs.
Don Mock 17:02
Serial entrepreneur guy.
J. Gonzo 17:07
He was making the most expensive commercially available golf clubs. Way over-engineered. They had a 50% failure rate during their manufacturing.
Don Mock 17:55
Oh, my God.
J. Gonzo 17:56
Not a good deal. He’s a billionaire. And he’s selling these high touch, super elite, very expensive to very rich people who could also afford it. It’s a billionaire selling stuff to other billionaires. He decided… we came up with a campaign, very luxury campaign, very clean, very black and white, all the stuff. All the high touch kind of stuff. He decided the best way to do this. We had a bunch of commercial campaigns that went along with our with broadcasts. He buys a ton of commercial time. He loves seeing his shit on TV. We can swear?
Don Mock 18:26
Yeah, it’s fine.
J. Gonzo 18:27
So he decides – good because this is going to come to my punchline here. He decides the best way to sell these golf clubs are with dick jokes.
Don Mock 18:34
Oh, no.
J. Gonzo 18:35
He fancies himself a creative person. So he’s just making commercial after commercial, that essentially is like “how big is your club?” kind of joke. Over and over and over again. And sales are fine but –
Don Mock 18:49
But it’s not work you’re proud of. It’s not work you’re recommended.
J. Gonzo 18:53
My name is nowhere on that stuff. I was kind of a freelance creative director at that place. That’s a long story. I was a freelancer and they kept shedding people. Then I was suddenly like, am I the person with the most experience?
Don Mock 19:04
Are you the only person, the one?
J. Gonzo 19:05
I mean, at some point, I was the only person with more than five years experience in that department. And so by default… I mean, I had been creative director before then, too. But the real bitch of it is that, this guy is a billionaire many times over. I could lose that guy – lose him $10 million. It’s not even a percent of his bottom line. You know what I mean?
Don Mock 19:26
It doesn’t matter.
J. Gonzo 19:26
It’s not even 1%. I mean, that is a ruinous amount of money that you or I are 98% of the percent of the people on the planet –
Don Mock 19:33
It’s crazy to think about.
J. Gonzo 19:33
But he can lose $10,000,000 and be like, “Well, that didn’t work.” I mean, but he’s still doing it.
Don Mock 19:40
Are those clubs still out there?
J. Gonzo 19:41
I think so. I don’t know if I really want to name drop.
Don Mock 19:44
No, no, don’t.
J. Gonzo 19:45
But people listen to these things I said. You can figure out who it is. That guy just does, he just does that. It’s hard to save clients from themselves sometimes. I think that is when you’re putting, when you are… I think we all will call, when you have to polish a turd. So I got pretty good at turd polish. I’ve been doing a lot of my life.
Don Mock 20:06
Well, anybody who’s worked on our side of the fence for an extended period of time has encountered that, for a variety of reasons. There’s no silver or magic bullet as to why it happens. Sometimes it’s just in the agency culture, sometimes it’s the client sometimes it’s…
J. Gonzo 20:19
I like the team system really screwed that up. Back in the early 2000s, when everyone moved to teams, so your bigger departments like your Timber claims or DDBs and stuff. Everyone was in a team now. So you were on the Delta team or you are on the whatever team and your clients. It put the client at the center of the advertising universe in a way that had never had before. And it really called into question our expertise on this side of the table. I think since and now just with muggles out there downloading Photoshop and Illustrator and InDesign. Then just getting YouTube tutorials.
Don Mock 20:53
You don’t even need to use YouTube tutorials anymore. You just type it in and AI.
J. Gonzo 20:57
Oh, yeah.
Don Mock 20:58
It’s like, “Give me an image of this doing this and this, and it’s like, oh, I’m a creative.” That’s horrible.
J. Gonzo 21:02
None of the… I mean, I’ve seen… we, I don’t know if you talked about those AI logos. But it’s like, “Our jobs are fine.”
Don Mock 21:07
Yeah, we’ve talked a little bit about AI. But every time we talk about it, it’s totally different the next time we come in to talk about it. That’s what’s totally insane about it. I think if I was to answer my own question about some of the difficulties or what I liked the least, I think I would echo your sentiments in that, I think it’s more the frustration of knowing what’s going to happen before it happens. You mentioned, you’ve got a tremendous amount of experience. We’ve got a tremendous amount of experience here. And it’s, Hey, you know what’s going to happen. You’ve hired the doctor to diagnose you, we’ve given you the diagnosis. You don’t like the diagnosis. Okay, that’s fine. Let’s talk about why. Let’s talk about this. And at the end of the day, it’s commercial art. You’re paying. It’s a transaction. You know, you have the right to veto. I get it. Well, I need to tell you in as delicate a manner as possible, I’ve seen this happen before, many times. So this is X. We’re playing hopscotch here. And we know what’s going to happen and just the inability, sometimes – not, I said, the power of persuasion earlier – but it’s not convincing someone. It’s just like, “Hey, we know where this is gonna go.” Then you just kind of have to live it out.
J. Gonzo 22:18
It’s like being a parent. You’re like, “Hey, bud it’s a bad idea.” And they’re like, Nope, they’re gonna do it, and then they fall and hurt themselves. They cry and you’re like, “Alright, I think someone might have mentioned how bad an idea that was.”
Don Mock 22:27
I know. But the problem there is – and it’s a great analogy, but it’s – oh, well, you don’t fire your parents for giving you advice –
J. Gonzo 22:36
But kids will blame parents. I know exactly where you’re going, where they hire you because they like what you’ve done. They asked you to do it for them. Then they tell you how to do it.
Don Mock 22:44
They fight against you.
J. Gonzo 22:45
And then when it doesn’t work, you get all the blame. I dislike that aspect of it. But I will say one of the things I do love about advertising is all the stuff that I think people on the outside would think was like you know, crazy that we do. The overnights, the long hours, the impossible things –
Don Mock 23:01
Do you love that?
J. Gonzo 23:02
30 hours of work to do in 10 hours. People are like “oh my god, I can’t do it.” I’m like, “Give it to me. Let’s do this.” Then when it gets done, when it actually happens and sometimes it’s good. It’s just there’s no high like that. You know –
Don Mock 23:13
For any of those prospective clients out there listening, we do not do that.
J. Gonzo 23:16
I mean, you know-
Don Mock 23:16
We are an 8:30-5:30 shop and we don’t work overnight.
J. Gonzo 23:19
I mean, so have you ever worked at like a big –
Don Mock 23:22
Yeah, when I was young, before I own my own shop. It was definitely… there were certain situations where, “Oh my god it’s a 16-hour-day.” You’re only as good as your last great idea. It’s a pressure cooker. It’s a this and that. I don’t think that that promotes great creative bonding. You know what I mean? Or teamwork at Mock, the Agency.
J. Gonzo 23:39
The people I was at my first agency with, the one that was probably the most like a madman type agency. We were just a beehive of people doing crazy shit. I caught the tail end of the cocaine and hooker days. So I had some people who had grown up in that. I had mean creative directors. He would just walk in and just go shit, shit, shit.
Don Mock 24:01
Just crumble up your stuff.
J. Gonzo 24:02
Exactly.
Don Mock 24:03
Kick something on the way out the door.
J. Gonzo 24:04
You slept there that night. He comes in at nine in the morning freshly shaved and clean. And you’re like, okay, man, here’s my idea. And he’s just like, this is garbage. Yeah, I’ve done all of that but I think it like kind of trauma-bonded me. Those are the only people I still talk to in advertising. Are the ones when it was still this vicious, kind of brutal business. There’s a part of me that can’t turn it off. I mean, I love the mad science of it all. I love that somebody can come to me with, Hey, man, we need you. We need the campaign for the Phoenix Children’s Hospital. I’m like, awesome. That’s great. There’s some kind of ethical expression in what I’m doing there. But also someone’s like, man, I’ve got this cold sore cream medication, that is just we took a generic version and slapped a fancy label on it. Can you do something with that? I kind of want to see if I can. I love just, I want to know –
Don Mock 24:48
Sometimes the most drab, wacky things you had never thought about are sometimes the most fun projects.
J. Gonzo 24:54
I just like seeing them do it more than anything. I never ask. I would absolutely build the atomic bomb. I would never have stopped and been like, “Is this ethical? Should we be doing this?” I would have been like if I had the scientific knowledge to, when someone’s like hey man can you make a nuclear weapon? I’m like, “I don’t know but I’m going to try.”
Don Mock 25:07
Yeah, let’s do it.
J. Gonzo 25:08
You know, how often are we asked to make some kind of nuclear weapon, that’s like I don’t know if this is gonna mess a lot of things up.
Don Mock 25:13
That’s funny. Every guest we have on… we didn’t do it before. But every guest we have on I always ask them what their favorite brand or design or whatever out there is.
J. Gonzo 25:23
Man.
Don Mock 25:24
I know I’m hitting you. You can name a few that come to mind. It’s always fun to say “Hey, what are you reacting to?”
J. Gonzo 25:31
Really recently I’m really diggin what Liquid Death is doing.
Don Mock 25:33
Liquid Death?
J. Gonzo 25:34
Yeah.
Don Mock 25:34
We did a whole podcast on Liquid Death, actually.
J. Gonzo 25:35
Man. I think it’s… you know, its water, dude. It’s water. Its bubbly water and maybe some flavors and it’s so fun and dumb and just so like beat up metal. It’s just a 1988 drawing on my notebook in water form. I think it’s kind of fantastic. I really liked what Factory Records did back in the day for their record packaging. I think they were really smart and clean. They had a look when everything was so punk and “fucked up and photocopied.” There’s a great book called that. But that was kind of the punk aesthetic. They just were like, “Nah, we’re gonna be super clean and modern.”
Don Mock 26:10
Yeah, that’s cool.
J. Gonzo 26:11
I like their whole deal. Factory Records.
Don Mock 26:13
Fun.
J. Gonzo 26:14
I’m trying to think what… I mean, all the other usual. Anything Vignelli touched. I think the New York subway system rebrand is fantastic. I think the NASA rebrand with the snake logo that happened in the 70s was –
Don Mock 26:26
Super cool.
J. Gonzo 26:27
What was that company that just printed that recently? Not more than five years ago. You can buy the NASA style guide.
Don Mock 26:33
That’s incredible.
J. Gonzo 26:34
I liked that rebrand. There’s a really good Vox video on this, where Nixon hired someone to rebrand all the public services. They had all these really clean logos.
Don Mock 26:44
But they never adopted them?
J. Gonzo 26:45
A lot of them did. It’s where were you the IRS logo from. It’s where we get – I’m trying to think what the other ones are. But yeah, those logo rebrands are fine.
Don Mock 26:52
Super fun.
J. Gonzo 26:52
Great. Yeah. So, I just quite love anything kind of Swiss or Vignelli, kind of somewhere in between.
Don Mock 26:58
Man, you’re speaking to my wife’s heart. We’re a big Masimo fan at our house.
J. Gonzo 27:04
Did you watch the documentary?
Don Mock 27:06
We’ve seen it all. He’s been to our house. I mean, Rachel co-taught a little charette with him for a week. She did a week here at SCAD. Then I want to say maybe one or two weeks up in Rochester when you’re still there. So yeah, we’ve got… we’re big fans.
J. Gonzo 27:23
Nice.
Don Mock 27:24
Yeah, super fun. We’ve got his chairs. We try to get as much Vignelli stuff as we can. It’s super awesome. Zoey and him had pancakes one morning, so… that’s totally insane. It’s pretty cool.
J. Gonzo 27:37
I really like what, I believe it’s Kodak, is doing right now, where it has all these great photographs. It has what you would have typed into an AI prompt to get that photograph. And it says “Don’t give up on the real thing.” Yeah, I’m kind of like… that right now is probably the thing I’m most like, “This sounds a bit.” Every so often someone writes a headline so great that you’re just like –
Don Mock 27:57
Such a universal truth.
J. Gonzo 28:00
I kind of want to punch them just because I didn’t get there first. But yeah, I think it’s Kodak. And I think it’s like, “Don’t give up on the real thing.” Yeah. And it’s kind of fantastic.
Don Mock 28:10
For me, I remember the one that really punched me when it debuted was, believe it or not, Volkswagen of all things. You know, “On the road of life, there are drivers and their passengers. Drivers wanted.” I was like, “My God, that’s so smart.” That is just so smart. They were coming out of like Fahrvergnugen and all sorts of terrible. It was the doldrums of Volkswagen. I was like, alright, that’s like –
J. Gonzo 28:28
Trio. Right? That was the band that did that song that “dadada” for the Fahrvergnugen.
Don Mock 28:33
Yeah, I don’t remember.
J. Gonzo 28:33
I think. Look that up, whoever’s listening. It’s a band called Trio. They do a song called –
Don Mock 28:36
I’ll take your word for it. Or we’ll fact check it later.
J. Gonzo 28:38
There we go.
Don Mock 28:40
All right. Well, hey, thanks for sitting in man. Super fun.
J. Gonzo 28:43
Thanks for having me, man.
Don Mock 28:44
As always, as always, brother. All right. Where can people find you?
J. Gonzo 28:46
Just go to my Instagram, it’s JGonzoart. I do have a YouTube channel where I’m talking about just my approach to advertising I’ve got one video out now, but hopefully there’ll be two by the time this comes out.
Don Mock 28:55
Well, yeah, the video is great. I love the video. I might steal that and rebrand that.
J. Gonzo 28:58
Hey, man, you’re welcome to. That’s why I put it up there. Honestly it’s like everyone’s out there –
Don Mock 29:01
Well, we were talking about educating clients. There’s what I love is the stretch about here’s what you can control. Here’s what you, once you put things out in the world, you don’t control the narrative as much anymore.
J. Gonzo 29:02
Yeah. Some of those diagrams are taken right from my client presentation, like the art design PR, where there’s overlap and brand. Anyway, yeah, so that –
Don Mock 29:19
That’s on your YouTube channel?
J. Gonzo 29:20
YouTube channel J Gonzo. You can find me. I think there’s some numbers after it. But if you put in like “J Gonzo in advertising” or whatever, it’ll come up.
Don Mock 29:26
Yeah. All right. Cool. Thanks, everybody, for listening. As always, send us comments, thoughts, questions, concerns, five-star reviews, always.
J. Gonzo 29:34
Always five stars. Six if you can make it happen.
Don Mock 29:36
Yeah, please do, please do. You can find us online at mocktheagency.com or all the socials @mocktheagency. We’ll chat with you next time. Thanks, everybody.
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