It's a Crazy Time, so Let's Get Crazy

Taking Inspiration From Jay Chiat

Posted by Bart Cleveland on 06.22.09 @ 01:27 PM

Bart Cleveland

It gives me goose bumps every time I watch it, because it should be the mantra of our industry.

Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them. Disagree with them.
Glorify, or vilify them.
About the only think you can't do, is ignore them.
Because, they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to change the world,
Are the ones who do.

A piece about Crispin's Andrew Keller in the latest issue of Creativity magazine quoted him as stating the secret to staying relevant in advertising is twofold: mess with culture and help make companies successful.

Notice the order of his secret to relevancy.
1. Mess with culture (be a rebel, change things).
2. Help make companies successful (push forward).

The first step leads to accomplishing the second.

Not long after reading Keller's interview, I was cleaning out my files and I found a copy of Tom Hayden's eulogy to Jay Chiat's passing that ran in Creativity magazine in 2002. At the top of the photocopy was my hand scrawled admonition to my staff in bright red marker: "What makes an agency great? Read on."

I hoped they would see that the answer to my question, according to Hayden, is to emulate the man Hayden called "The Master of Zig." Here are the first words of the article:

The night before we presented the storyboard for '1984' Jay was on a tear. He didn't think anything we had in the room -- including '1984' -- was good enough, new enough, smart enough, beautiful enough. He was upset. He was brutal. He wanted to cancel the meeting.

Hayden went on to write that Chiat would trash anything that seemed like the absolutely right thing to do. He embraced the wrongheaded and crazy with firm assurance that the work was not following, but leading the way to more effective work.

Jay Chiat is a man that we could use today because there is a lot of fear in our industry. Fear breeds mediocrity and careers of such men as Jay Chiat prove that there is no excuse for mediocrity.

I can't help but believe that those who wrote "Think Different" were thinking of Mr. Chiat. So, read the words of the "Think Different" campaign and take them to heart.

Then, make them true.

10 Comments

  By PHILIP | CAMBRIDGE, MA June 22, 2009 01:54:59 pm:

Bart, I love this. I love the sources you quoted, the stories, and the passion behind it all. It's great motivation for a rainy day in Boston. Nice work as always. Phil Johnson

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  By mbbagency | KANSAS CITY, MO June 22, 2009 06:08:53 pm:

Ditto. In fact, we pulled that spot up the other day at our agency for a little inspiration. Very timely. Great advice as always. Thank you.
Phil Bressler
Muller Bressler Brown

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  By QUINCY | ATLANTA, GA June 23, 2009 10:21:42 am:

Bart, this is great for those who live in my world.

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  By stevenstark | Fairfield, CT June 24, 2009 09:01:08 am:

When I got into advertising I remember being thrilled to hear that crazy people like Jay Chiat and George Lois were not only welcome in the business but were driving the business. I couldn't agree more Bart—with advertising in such a state of flux, now's definitely the time to get crazy.
www.stevenstark.net
www.twitter.com/stevenstark

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  By mikegermano | Brooklyn, NY June 24, 2009 09:05:08 am:

I downloaded the "Think Different" commercial audio to my iphone and set it as my alarm clock. I feel listening to it in the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day.

Great article, you are right crazy times call for crazy measures.

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  By conniela | Nyack, NY June 24, 2009 10:20:09 am:

All who value the creativity of crazy, crazy insane strokes of genius will enjoy this new song by Apsci, coming out in August - Crazy, Crazy, Insane: http://www.myspace.com/apsci

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  By boxingclever1 | St. Louis, MO June 24, 2009 12:51:36 pm:

Too often, we do what's safe and exactly what the client asks for. When pioneers like the above mentioned take things further and actually bring out the raw emotion of a brand, it makes you feel good and it makes the brand look good.

An otherwise bleak news day, with more bad recession news, etc. etc. livened up and inspired by this article. Thanks Bart, I truly needed this, and everyone in our business needs this.

Jim Harper
http://www.boxing-clever.com/

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  By Markstout | Denver, CO June 24, 2009 02:23:29 pm:

Well said!
Mark Stout
http://markstoutphotography.com

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  By hartmanjon | Minneapolis, MN June 24, 2009 06:37:54 pm:

I adore that this follows (by one day, no less!) Jeremy Mullman's and Emily Bryson York's piece lambasting Crispin's Burger King work for not single-handedly closing the gap with McDonald's.

Sometimes messing with culture is the ONLY way to push things forward.

I'm a couple of days late, but happy jay/day everyone! http://tinyurl.com/mp7pad

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  By DOUGLAS | LITTLE YORK, NJ June 25, 2009 11:11:23 am:

Jay Chiat was the only agency head I worked for that actually fired clients. If clients didn't buy into the agency's iconoclastic creative approach, they were gone. I remember when Jay fired three clients in one day, including Motel Six. The hotel chain apparently didn't understand award-winning ads like "We give you fewer color TV problems at motel Six" (with a picture of a B&W TV).

Jay was relentlessly focused on a mantra similar to that of Ray Rubicam, the founder of Young and Rubicam, "Resist the Expected." While Y&R softened that dictum as it grew bigger (in accordance with another of Jay's famous sayings— How big can we get before we get bad?"—Jay stuck to it until the end, when he had to sell what was left of his agency to Omnicom.

I will always remember Jay's response to the first campaign I wrote at Chiat/Day Los Angels with Lee Clow, for the NBC-TV station in Seattle, Washington. I guess the station was looking for a campaign along the lines of "News 4 Seattle." Lee and I gave them "News for Know-It-Alls," which forced Jay to make a special trip from LA to Seattle to talk the station's general manager out of killing the campaign.

Jay Chiat's hard-nosed attitude for walking the plank for work he believed in, has always been an inspiration in my career, to the point of firing my own clients, and burning more than a few bridges. The hard-earned result is that I never have to be ashamed of creative work I've done, with a few exceptions.

I talked to Jay a year before he died when he was living in the Hamptons. He was on the board of one of my clients, and I asked him if I could run a campaign for that client by him. In my conversation with him, he sounded tired. He said he didn't do advertising anymore. Didn't do advertising! I was shocked. I always thought Jay, like Ed Ney, Chairman Emeritus at Y&R, would work in the industry virtually forever.

So in the end, where did Jay's iconoclastic approach get him? I thought about it for a minute, and remembered what Pancho Villa, the notorious Mexican bandito reputedly said, "I'd rather die standing up than live my life on my knees."

That certainly is thinking different.

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