Sunday, June 17, 2007
Lee Clow: Why 2007 Isn’t Like 1984
by
The closing line in the famous 1984 Macintosh Super Bowl commercial was “And you will see why 1984 won’t be like 1984." That commercial did a great job of putting the agency, Chiat Day, on the map and making an icon out of Lee Clow, their creative director. Bob Garfield of Advertising Age magazine interviewed the still prolific and widely respected Clow on the eve of the Cannes Advertising Festival to get his opinion on what has changed in the advertising industry in the 23 years since that time (story here, subscription or pay credits may be required).
A few excerpts:
Mr. Garfield: Where do you think advertising is headed in a world dominated by binary code?
Mr. Clow: The world has evolved to a place where brands that need to speak to their audience have to understand that everything that they do is media. Everything that they do is telling their story.
It’s not as simple as it used to be. You could kind of dominate an audience by GRPs on prime-time television, and that’s all you had to do. Now people have become very, very sophisticated. They can ultimately decide how they feel about brands by evaluating all their messages. And their messages include product, stores, packaging, internet, conversations that people are allowed to have about those brands—whether they’re producing stuff in Asia in sweatshops, whether they’re as ethical or green or whatever as the world wants them to be.
Mr. Garfield: Has the creative community not been informed that there’s a digital revolution going on?Mr. Clow: It’s been a little bit of dragging traditional creative people kicking and screaming into the notion that we’re going to do complete media expressions for the brands we work for, and we aren’t going to start with TV; we’re going to start with ideas.
Creative people are 50% ego and 50% insecurity. They need to constantly be told they’re good and they’re loved. And nobody’s figured out a way to celebrate the people who do interesting, multimedia accomplishments on behalf of brands.
Mr. Garfield: One of my big gripes with Cannes and other shows is that it emphasizes the wrong values, of being hilarious and dramatic and spectacular at the expense of creating connections between brands and consumers.
Mr. Clow: One of the things, as I’ve gotten older, that’s frustrated me with shows is, for the most part, the people I respect aren’t judging those shows. They’re some, you know, young, newly appointed associate creative director or creative director who’s still full of himself, and he’s looking at the coolest directors and the funniest spots and the most outrageous stuff as being the criteria.
