Or Why Every Brand Trying to Zig Ends Up in the Same Moodboard.
What follows is not an article.
It is a cultural exorcism disguised as discourse.
A hyper-erudite critique of the cult of Boldness.
A semiotic safari through the jungle of branded quirk.
A eulogy for originality, buried beneath a drone shot and an earnest VO.
Let us begin—like all truly brave campaigns do—with a manifesto.
“We wanted to do something bold.”
The brief lies, twitching in a Figma board.
“We pushed boundaries.”
Only to find the boundaries were pre-lit and Icelandic.
In 2025, to be Bold is to follow a very specific design system.
What masquerades as “Brave” is simply a templated ballet of the performatively daring.
Every campaign wears the same turtleneck.
Reads the same Chimamanda quote.
Licenses the same slow-motion horse.
Take Patagonia’s “Silence is Loud”—a seven-minute ASMR of moss growing over a logo.
Or Moncler’s “We Are Sky”—a spoken-word short film narrated by a genderless cloud.
All very “disruptive.”
All aggressively curated to win that one specific jury vote from the Berlin strategist who once fasted in the desert for brand insight.
It is not creativity.
It is creative cosplay.
Brands are not taking risks.
They are LARPing as artists.
They are cosplaying dissent.
They are painting over sameness with very expensive absurd look and feel.
This is the aesthetic of Bold, Brave and Different:
Where blue lighting = future.
Where crying = realness.
Where every “challenger brand” is backed by a holding company older than democracy.
It is not authenticity.
It is algorithmic rebellion.
Why?
Because the safest place to hide today is inside the posture of risk.
If your brand looks like it might have opinions, it gets applauded.
Even if the opinion is just: “We see you.”
The true innovation is in the font.
The illusion of edge.
The performative gravel in the VO.
The fact that we call this “truth-telling” while the legal team has a tab open on tone policing.
In this landscape, “Different” means:
Using Helvetica but in lowercase.
Shooting in B&W but with hope.
Saying “human-first” while tracking eye-movements.
What remains is not a campaign.
It’s a cultural dress rehearsal.
For a brand too scared to be ugly, too polished to be real.
We are not witnessing bravery.
We are witnessing a well-lit, legally approved hallucination of it.
Until someone actually risks being bad, being weird, or (god forbid) being funny—
Bold will remain just another word for beige.
—The Average Adman
Adjunct Professor of Purposeful Lighting
Dean of the Faculty of Branded Bravery Studies
Guest Lecturer at the School of Expensive Nihilism
(P.S. Our unlimited-edition tote bags could come pre-crumpled, infused with rosemary, and retail at €301. They don’t but still, irony is the new integrity.)
