Lee Clow - president with a beard and wearing shorts. Genius. Bashny.Net

Lee Clow (Lee Clow) - one of the pillars of the creative world, especially television, commercials, chairman and creative director of the agency TBWA \ Chiat \ Day. For so many well-known commercials worth it talant.



57-year-old Clough looks as it should be the patriarch: long gray hair and a bushy gray beard, his forehead shining eyes of Leonardo and Santa Claus. Perhaps he otherwise looked like 15 years ago when, under his strict guidance of creative video created legendary Apple «1984", but can not be the judge of that, some people are born to be elders. He is energetic, cheerful and entertaining.

TBWA - an abbreviation of the names of the founders / owners (Tragos, Bonnange, Wiesendanger, Ajroldi), absolutely classic example of the "logo" in the old sense of the word printing. Agency with a very interesting history and thirty years of history itself has a solid record of achievement.

This agency he had been at all possible roles. But the truly memorable was the day of his appointment as president. Bank employees will be telling their grandchildren about how long-haired, bearded guy in sandals and shorts came to sign checks for millions of dollars mediainvestitsii.

But Lee - leader. And it can be seen immediately, no matter what he wears. It clerks see it without words clearly to customers, and it is an axiom for the hundreds of people working with him in this or face Clow in the past. This is a guy who owns a management system that will never collapse, the one to whom you entrust your ship in a storm. But the yasnovyrazhayuschiysya art director on the planet. And the fact - a copywriter who created the most pictures. He raised 15 generations of creatives who were not taking off t-shirts with the slogan «Good enough is not good enough» (Good enough - not good enough).

His name in the Hall of Fame One Club, Art Directors Club and the Museum of Modern Art's Advertising.

You TBWA in the past 30 years. How did you managed to, received, certainly not less than 20 000 offers, do not buck and work all the time in one place? That depends on the person. Different people have different ways of becoming. On the first day of Chiat Day, I realized that I was at home, where I can implement all his talent and all his faculties. I tried his luck in the other, no less huge agency on the West Coast, but I knew that I could not work there. And then I found a place where I could grow, and immediately realized that he had come here to stay. I have been married for 35 years. Probably, consistency - this is my essence.

Some people get divorced and get married, get divorced and marry, moving from job to job, from job to job. To each his own. I do not know, maybe it's acquired characteristics. All that I know that too many people deceive themselves, jumping from one place to another, and then go out of business in 35 years, because the compromised volatility, the pursuit of money. The only good reason for deciding to look for a new job - the inability to do what you want and you can, in your sincere conviction to do.

Look around. Are there any mentors? Can I here to learn something? Are there any prospects I need? Feel that reach their peak here - go away. But do not run if someone just offered you more money. Material values ​​must be the last motive. Because in the end, if you're doing a great job - the money will come.

Apple - 1984 (history of advertising Apple)
 

I know that Apple does not want to broadcast video "1984". They simply were forced to do it, because they could not sell redeemed during a break Superbowl. And if they all left, and "Best ever created clips" was ruined, what would happen to your career? And in general, how do you know that before you an opportunity to create a campaign that will have a significant impact on your career? It's clear that the brief does not lie and does not shout, "Hey, I was the project that will help you make a name!". One of the important features of this business is that it brings more when you do something with persistence, through resistance, with endurance and stamina than when simply shines. If they suddenly "hacked" "1984", we simply would not know that it was a landmark in our career job. When you are constantly striving to do something significant, different, fresh, most of the work falls under the knife for a variety of sometimes silly and sometimes well-founded reasons. But you keep trying. No one took the idea - go and try to create another. If done enough, in the end, a few of them break through the defense.

We had no idea what glory awaits "1984". We knew the spot turned out really cool, but there was no thought that he would make me famous. Each time, getting a job, you're trying to create work that goes beyond the boundaries of the possible and give everything that you're trying to say, and sometimes mistaken assumption that it will be the best of created. In the end all turns out - get your shit or something really daring, but stupid is not challenging anyone to buy the goods.

So you can not go out of the way - we need to continue again and again, aiming at the highest class. We must persevere when good ideas do not accept and return with even better. But most agencies are going on about the customer having received the first criticism of excellent solutions, they come and ask, "OK. What do you want? "And doing what the customer requires. We have, like, tried to do something cool, but we did not understand, and now can only fulfill all the wishes of the client. This is the worst syndrome.

Adidas - Laila

Adidas - Hello Tomorrow

What should be the perfect education for the advertisement? If tomorrow you have retired and went to teach, what would be your first lesson? I think that schools promote the development of advertising. But there is a bottleneck. The course should prepare a wide-professionals, rather than purely copywriters and art directors. Creative people should be creative leader. In the process he will have to work with all the media, to get acquainted with the new channels of communication, strategy, branding, culture and national characteristics.

Learning should be much more than a school can give. When I decided to enter into this profession, I started otsmatrivat catalogs of festival works and tried by their example to create good videos and prints. And now I know I need much more knowledge of the features of the human psyche, to offer them the computer that they want to buy a car in which they want to go, the beer they want to drink. And it's not as simple as "create a video and print».

Playstation - Double Life (about how to create a legend Playstation)
 

Famous creative people with whom I was talking about you, called Lee Clow nicest creative director in the world. But, talking to people, I have also concluded that the rewards and take your best customers and totally inadequate leaders who pushed around creatives, vtaptyvaya them in the dirt. As you look at this? I'm lucky. I "landed" in the territory, where the overall goal was' Let's do an excellent job, "and no one tried to format my brain. I found own way of "production". I do not think it is constructive to become a tyrant and did not feel normal "instruction" in the spirit "so this shit, you'll be better if you come by tomorrow morning with something worthwhile." I know how to support and how to help people discover the best opportunities if they are doing something good. When I walk across the room, where the creators are working on ideas, I always keep instinctive reactions like, "Oh, how weak," try to find at least a small path to the development of the theme, saying, "If you do this and that, and then take and razverneshsya all like this, it will be one of the best ideas I've seen here. " This is my learning style. To help find the grain in every idea and disclose, deploy them, and did not spread rot and despised their words, that's your job "sucks" and that you'd better put it in order, or throw away.

I can be very zealous, meticulous, exacting detail. From me you can hear phrases like "this is not the kind of music", "this line of the story - not the most good." I may be too pedantic, trying to make something perfect, but I do not know how to be nasty, spiteful, picky. I assume that someone with these qualities can fly high and get a result, but the majority of people - perfectionists who tend to make their team unhappy because too put pressure on them, impose them on his shoulders more than they can endure .

iPod - Hey Mama (review of the entire advertising agency created for the iPod)
 

Relationship "client-agency" such as those that exist between you and Steve Jobs, between TBWA and Apple - are unique. It seems to me that a certain decline in the industry due to the very fact that customers perceive as providers of advertisers rather than business partners. Too little trust and understanding from both storon.Eto what hurts me. For 30 years I have tried to achieve more, become not just a vendor, but unfortunately, at one point we still somehow put in place. This is true. Whether we like it or not.

Apple - Think Different

So, I, as a beginner advertiser, can learn from your experience working with Steve Jobs? Nuuu Steve is unique. Such clients are very few. There is one guy for whom you are doing. This is an exceptional case. You need to find client-side intelligent person with whom you are and will be working.

Most creatives can not listen and do not want to learn it. I think that we are too active in an effort to prove how smart we are, and therefore spend more time talking and not listening. In my opinion, the best way to build relationships - are struggling to listen to customers. Such accounts are listening to, but usually say, "he told me that they want to order this and here it." But if you try to listen better, you will learn: As a rule, customers do not say what they want. They are trying to articulate what they are looking for. But the only way that the client can express it, that the formulation of the obvious phrases. And the source of intuition, without allowing these words just fly out the window. A clever listener will understand what the customer wants you to ask, but do not know how to do it. If you did everything correctly, then returned to it, will be able to say: "You know what they talked about, planning to move forward from this point A to point B. And this today, I'll show you something that will make people think that the key that you had in mind ».

In other words, listen - this is really a difficult task for the smartest guy in the room, but only until such time as he did not stop to argue that the coolest here. That's how I built a relationship with Steve Jobs. I listened and listened and listened and listened, because it is one of the most brilliant people with whom I have ever worked with. And now I have sufficient confidence on his part that express their point of view, because I know his thoughts. He is aware of this fact. And when the client knows that you understand it, you get tons of desired freedom and independence of action. And if the customer sees in you only know-all-creatives - believe that successful relationships do not happen.

Energizer - Genie
One of the most famous advertising characters - Bunny Energizer - owes its birth Clow.







Let's turn to Bang Theory TBWA - it is about taking risks, undermining traditional values. But how it will be implemented in the countries in which initially a completely different culture, a different system remains very pozitivnomyslyaschim obschestva.Ya probably for this reason that I keep working for 30 years. Advertising can be very frustrating business. I think we are entering in the period (so dictates my impenetrable optimism), in which the love of good creatives to his profession is so essential, so commonplace that even in countries which do not differ boldness and advanced, aware that only with such people can establish communication with the outside world. Campaigns that are fighting for your attention, which is immensely gifted in creativity, the ability of interest that can be clever and create hilarious relationship between the company, the product and the consumer will just need customers who have decided to be invisible and mediocrity in its category, and leaders not wanting to spend money unnecessarily.

And you have to do something catchy, something unlike that were born earlier. I think now is the time when advertisers are starting to believe in the best creative solutions. I think that even for conservative cultures the best way to build a business - follow the principles dictated by the surrounding reality, especially if there are plans to enter the world level.

Consumers are becoming too smart and too picky, so to build a dialogue with them can only be to treat people with more respect and showing all the creativity to which you are capable.

I understand what you're saying. Sometimes, it seems to me that people do not want to believe in things that sound nevozmozhno.Chto, all experience shyness, everyone is afraid. In the end, everything will begin to change on the basis of economic conditions. And then the most courageous will be those who will move all dalshe.

Taco Bell - Chihuahua



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