Worldwide Creative Director & Chairman
TBWA

When I called Lee I was telling myself over and over again, “Don’t ask him 1984 questions, don’t ask him 1984 questions. The man must be sick of talking of 1984 questions!”So when he called me I did just that and asked him a 1984 question. Couldn’t help it, (sorry Lee). But he didn’t unchain the voracious Taco Bell dog on me, he actually pointed out a brilliant insight; An incredible advertising career is not about creating an incredibly amazing ad, it’s about making an incredible amazing ad every single day of your career, it’s about getting those ads killed, and resurrecting them over and over and over again. It’s about your season average, not that occasional home-run. Phew that’s a relief.

Lee’s probably the most respected Creative Director in the world and one of the nicest. He’s a member of the One Club Hall of Fame, the Art Directors Hall of Fame, and the Museum of Modern Art’s Advertising Hall of Fame. Here’s what Lee had to tell ihaveanidea:

Lee: Took a long time for us to get together, eh? It’s been really crazy.

ihaveanidea: I’ve been an art director at Ogilvy for 1 year, you’ve been at TBWA for 30 years. How do you know, given all the pressure to jump to the next 20,000 bucks, to stay at one place?

Lee: It’s a very personal decision. Different people are different in terms of the way they’re made. I knew since the day I arrived at Chiat Day that I was at home, and that I was at a place where I could prove my talent and my ability. I had been at another big place in the west coast where I knew I didn’t want to be, but I had found this place where I could grow, and I just knew the day I walked in, that I was going to stay there. And of course I am also married for 35 years too, so it could just be how I am.

Some people are married and divorced and married and divorced and go from job to job, so I think it’s a very personal thing. I don’t know if it’s something you can teach anyone. All I know is that a lot of people kid themselves by moving to too many jobs and then find themselves going out of the business when they’re 35 years old because they’ve compromised and jumped around for money and for the wrong reasons. The only reason you should move to a new job is if you are not getting the opportunity to do what you want to do and what you believe you can do.

You need to look around. Are there teachers here? Am I learning things? Am I getting the opportunities I need? If you feel you’ll never accomplish anything more there, you have to move. But don’t move because somebody else will you give you more money. Money has to be the last criteria. Because ultimately, if you are doing great work, the money will come.

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“Listen real hard to the smartest guy in the room before you go trying to prove how smart you are.”

ihaveanidea: Apple didn’t want to run 1984, but they bowed down because they couldn’t sell the media space in the Superbowl. If they would have bowed out and had the best commercial ever made’ been killed, how would that have impacted your career? How do I know when I have a career-making campaign in front of me? I know the brief won’t say Hey you, this is it, I am your career-making campaign!’

Lee: One of the things about this business is that it has a lot more to do with persistence, perseverance and endurance than brilliance. If they had killed 1984, I don’t think we would have even known that we lost a career-making commercial. Because if you are always trying to do something great and different and fresh, lots of them are going to be shut down for lots of stupid or good reasons, but you have to keep on trying. When they kill one, you have to go and try to make another one. If you do enough eventually a few of them will make it through the gauntlet.

We didn’t know that 1984 was going to be as famous as it is. We knew it was going to be pretty cool but it wasn’t the one commercial that was going to make me famous. Every time you get an assignment you are trying to make work that pushes the envelope and redefines whatever it is you are trying to say and sometimes you’ll be wrong in terms of you thinking that this will be the greatest commercial ever made. You’ll make it and it will come out shitty, or it will be really daring but it will end up being stupid, and won’t make any sense and won’t make anyone buy the product.

It’s all a matter of keeping on doing it over and over again, and always aiming as high as you can and having the persistence of having a good idea killed and coming back with another good idea, as opposed to doing what most agencies do, which is to have a great idea killed and then ask the client O.K. so what do you want?’ and then doing it. They’ll say we need some kids in it’ and you’ll go back and do just that.

We took our shot at doing something good, and now we’ll go do what the client wants. That’s the worst syndrome.

“For 30 years I have wanted to contribute more, and not be a vendor, but unfortunately the moment anything turns slightly askew we go back into the vendor box. Whether we like it not.”

ihaveanidea: Talking about Utopian societies, what do you think about Rick Boyko’s VCU Adcenter School? You are part of his advisory board so what do you think is the perfect advertising school? If you were to retire today and go teach tomorrow, what would you immediately teach in day one?

Lee: I think that the ad schools are trying to evolve but I think it needs to be a 360 degree thinking curriculum as opposed to an art direction or art direction/copywriting team curriculum. There’s so much in terms of the total thinking that a creative person has to process in order to be a creative leader. It has to do with total media, it has to do with new media, strategy, branding, culture, international differences etc.

There’s so much more to learn. When I decided to get into it, I just decided to be an art director and I started looking at award books and tried to do good ads and T.V. spots. I think it’s so much bigger now in terms of the stuff you need to learn, about how all the different impressions on people add up to the car I want to buy or the computer I want to own or even the beer I want to drink. It’s not as simple as the T.V. spot or the ad anymore.

ihaveanidea: Rick Boyko and several other people who have worked with you have told me you are the nicest Creative Director in the world. I’ve also conversed with people about the fact that mean chemically imbalanced creative directors who push around their creatives like dirt, also win the awards and clients. What’s your take on that?

Lee: I was very lucky that I landed in a place where the goal was Let’s do great stuff’ and no one tried to mold me. I found my own way of doing things. I don’t think it’s constructive to be a tyrant and I don’t think it’s constructive to just say this is shit, better show me something better by tomorrow morning’. What I know how to do is nurture and help people discover the best opportunities, if they are doing something good. I can usually walk into a room where people have been working on ideas, and even if my overall gut reaction is God, this is really weak stuff’, I usually can find the one little piece that has an opportunity and say “If you did this and then did that and then took this and expanded out from there, this is the best opportunity I see in this room”. That’s how I learned to do it. To basically find the seeds of an idea and help people expand and develop them as opposed to beating people around and telling them their work sucks and they’d better fix it or they’re out of here. I can’t. I don’t know how to do that.

I can get very intense and anal and demanding of the details. I can tell you, this music isn’t right’, the way he delivers the line isn’t good’ you know? I can get finicky in the details of trying to do something perfectly, but I don’t know how to be mean. Maybe some people can be mean, and it works for them, and they get away with it, but most people who are deemed mean’ are usually perfectionists who make mediocre people unhappy, cause they put more pressure on them then they can handle.

ihaveanidea: The client agency relationship between you and Steve Jobs and TBWA and Apple is very unique. My theory regarding the economic recession in the ad industry is that it’s mainly caused by the fact that clients see us as suppliers right now vs business partners and marketers. There is little trust and understanding of what each other’s role is.

Lee: That’s the vein of my existence. For 30 years I have wanted to contribute more, and not be a vendor, but unfortunately the moment anything turns slightly askew we go back into the vendor box. Whether we like it not.

“I remain very positive, which is why I remain working after 30 years.”

ihaveanidea: So what can I learn, as somebody that is starting out in advertising, from what you’ve learnt from working with Steve Jobs?

Lee: Well, Steve is unique. There aren’t many clients that are like that. You have one guy that you really work for. That’s very rare. You have to find the one really smart guy that you’re dealing with.

A thing that most creatives don’t do well is that you’ve gotta learn to listen. I think we are quick to prove how smart we are, so we spend more time talking than we do listening, and I think the best way to get a relationship is to listen like hell to what they’re saying. When account people listen they usually say he told me they want this and this and this and this’ but if you listen carefully they are usually not telling you what they want, they are trying to say what they are looking for. But the only way they can explain it is, by saying certain things that a left brained non-intuitive person would just fire out the window. If you are a smart listener you actually listen to what they are asking for, but don’t know how to ask. If you listen really carefully to what they are saying and you come back to them and say You know what you were saying about this is how you get there from here, what I am showing you today, can make people think what you were talking about when you were saying this.’

In other words, listen real hard to the smartest guy in the room before you go trying to prove how smart you are. That’s how I got a relationship with Steve Jobs. Because I listened really hard to him cause he’s the smartest guy I ever worked for and I have credibility now in terms of telling him what I think because I understand what he thinks. He knows that I get it and once the client thinks that you get it, you have tons more latitude to do stuff. If he thinks you are a punk creative who thinks you know everything. That’s the best way not to succeed with a client.

ihaveanidea: I want to ask you about the TBWA Disruption Theory because it’s all about taking risks, which I really really like. I am applying this theory to what I am trying to do with ihaveanidea, which is to revolutionize an industry in a country that is not used to revolutions, trying to push a country that aims for bronze and not for gold, and which is not as risk-loving as other ad nations. I have found people that believe in what we are doing, but can the disruption theory happen in an environment that is not entrepreneurial?

Lee: I remain very positive, which is why I remain working after 30 years. Advertising can be a very frustrating business. I think we are coming into a period, this is my extreme optimism showing, where what really good creative people love to do is going to become so imperative and so in vogue that even countries that are less imperative and less daring are going to realize that the only way to communicate in a world that is so full of communication option: the companies that are trying to fight for attention, that our talents at creating inviting, interesting, smart, funny relationships between companies, products and customers will become something that clients have to believe is necessary, and in that regard, then the speech will be that if you are making something that is just like every competitor in your category, you are wasting money and you are going to become invisible.

You have to be daring and make something that doesn’t look like anybody else. I think we are coming to a time where what we advertisers believe in, will be the best advertising decision to take. I think in more conservative cultures we are going to have to say, this is the smartest way to do business and the only way to do business in the world we live in today.

The consumers have gotten too smart and too selective and the only way you can communicate with them is to treat them with extreme respect and a lot of creativity. So I’d like to think that any culture that is dealing with a lot of the communication complexities that require you doing something daring and different, will have to put in context of a business decision not just bravado, doing something different for the sake of doing something different. Then you still have to find companies that have the desire to be competitive and they usually are underdogs rather the business leader in the category, who don’t want to be daring or take risks

ihaveanidea: I know what you mean. Sometimes I feel that people don’t want to believe in things that sound impossible.

Lee: Well, we’ve been through three years that brings that out in people. Everyone’s timid and afraid. Finally, I think things are turning around from an economic standpoint. Then the brave ones are the ones that are going to jump out there first.

Interview by:
Ignacio Oreamuno
ignacio@ihaveanidea.org
President
ihaveanidea