Author and smart-dressed man Tom Wolfe recently summed up the Internet as simply a quicker way to get information - all sound and image, signifying fewer strolls to the local porn monger and not much else. The honing of technology, goes the argument, hasn't changed the nature of humanity and tribes rule once more. In its relationship to advertising, the Internet looks as though it's changing everything, but those changes merit closer attention. It's bringing into sharp relief the dire importance of using good ideas to connect brands to humans and of working with smart, bold people. Many of us have bemoaned some of the over-researched, soulless pap that has passed for advertising in past years. As Internet companies flock to get TV ads (yes, still the medium of choice) on the air, they appear to be stirring the creative pot into a thick froth, and the result has often been as delightfully memorable as a defaced child. This will have an impact on all advertisers, inspiring perhaps a new era of ads that are audacious and brand-relevant all at once. The Internet has also paradoxically brought advertising back to yesteryear in some of the approaches to Web-based advertising (see Kricfalusi page).

During our research for Boards, many people bemoaned the absence of a new generation of smart, bold ad people. The brightest, they said, appeared to be running screaming from advertising and toward Internet-based concerns. But now the big corporations that are agencies and production companies - which must operate as lean mean business machines while also nurturing artists - are looking toward new media opportunities, thereby potentially bringing bright new minds back into the fold. I was recently privy to yet another discussion lamenting the disappearance of the bona fide ad "character," the kind that enlivened the industry back in the day and whose iconoclastic ways made good advertising and great stories. Said one agency veteran, pointing to a hotshot in his new media division, "Here are the new characters." They might not be legends in the making as we know them, but they are making their mark, funny clothes, funny ideas and all.

Together with the daring thinkers that currently populate agency, production and post offices, they will ensure TV commercial production does not go gently into irrelevance (cue the music), and may very well usher in a new way of thinking about branding and spot making.

It is our intention to document that new thinking and provide some of our own.

Welcome to Boards.

Teressa Iezzi
Associate Editor