A Walk Down Lois Lane: An Exclusive Interview With a Creative Legend

Few art directors have had a career like George Lois. Beginning in the late 1950s, his ground-breaking creative work at various New York advertising agencies broke all the rules while establishing brands and getting results for clients.

According to the still-active Lois, now 76, the key to great advertising is a combination of compelling words and visuals.

In 1960, when Lois left the firm Doyle Dane Bernbach to start his own shop at age 28, he was tired of being a corporate pawn. He was convinced the creatives needed to be in control of everything.

Papert Koenig Lois marked the first time an art director’s name was in the masthead of a major agency. In 1963, PKL was the first ad agency to go public, a move that Lois eventually regretted because his partners started playing it safe. By 1967 he had enough, and the restless ad man went off to start a few more full-service creative powerhouses.

He started producing daily commercials for the New York Herald-Tribune. In between ad jobs, Lois designed memorable conceptual covers for Esquire magazine for a decade through the mid-1970s.

In the early 1980s he masterminded the “I Want My MTV” campaign, enlisting as its pitchman Mick Jagger. At the time, the then fledgling network was teetering on extinction. That was until his spots ran in local markets urging viewers to demand local cable operators add the channel. Deluged with calls, the cable companies heeded the call, and popular culture was never the same.

Lois hasn’t slowed down a bit. At the time of this exclusive Chief Marketer interview at his Greenwich Village apartment, he became animated while discussing his campaign for a new cable network for baby boomers called American Life.

Among the luminaries featured in the spots is Joe Namath, who often showed up in Lois-produced commercials and ads during their heyday, pitching everything from Ovaltine chocolate powder and Olivetti typewriters to Cutty Sark whiskey.

And on Nov. 6, Rizzoli publishes a coffee-table book, Iconic America: A Roller-Coaster Ride through the Eye-Popping Panorama of American Pop Culture, the latest of Lois’s series of indispensable books on creativity in advertising. But this time he shares credit with fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, whose career Lois kick-started with a 1986 campaign that started with posters on the back of Manhattan telephone booths.

CHIEF MARKETER: Your Tommy Hilfiger ad listing his initials alongside those of established designers like Geoffrey Beene, Bill Blass and Calvin Klein created amazing word-of-mouth. Most of your career has been focused on creating print ads and commercials. But have you also been involved in coming up with promotional ideas for clients?

LOIS: My advertising is promotion. It’s the same thing. Great advertising has wheels of its own. The campaigns were always self-fulfilling prophesies. They became not only ad campaigns, but promotion ideas. I always did promotion pieces. To me, my advertising was always guerrilla advertising. You do it, and all the sudden it’s all over the place. I do what I call “famous advertising” with way, way less money than anybody ever spent. I do stuff that I know is going to get hot and picked up.

CHIEF MARKETER: But doesn’t it have to reinforce the brand?

LOIS: Of course. I recently taught a class and [the students] were talking about how they liked that beer commercial where the girl walks by and the guy changes the drink, something like that. Everybody said, “Yeah, I love that commercial.” I asked, “What brand, what’s the beer?” They argued for 10 minutes, and came up with four different beers.

CHIEF MARKETER: So the spot failed?

LOIS: Totally. Most advertising is invisible. They don’t remember seeing print ads either. So the name of the game is to do famous advertising with a big idea.

CHIEF MARKETER:Where do you usually find those big ideas?

LOIS: [pointing to his head] It’s in there. But you can’t have marketing guys coming to you and say, “You have to have these words in there and do this.” They give creative people this kind of directive to work off of. Marketing guys are so un-ambitious. My advertising says, “I want to change the world. And their advertising says, “Let’s inch up the sales a little bit.” What you’re trying to get done is so different from traditional advertising guys would do.

CHIEF MARKETER: You’re also known for easily working with celebrities. What’s the secret?

LOIS: I have a reputation for using famous people. Athletes would hear about it. All the agents knew, “If Lois calls, the stuff is hot. It’s fun. I did the “I want my Maypo!” campaign. Everybody thought it was a baby cereal. I had Mickey Mantle, Wilt Chamberlain, Johnny Unitas, Oscar Robertson, all crying, “I Want My Maypo! All the sudden it became the largest selling cereal for kids up to 16 years old. Maypo, the oatmeal cereal that heroes cry for.

CHIEF MARKETER:How careful should marketers be when they align themselves with a celebrity who doesn’t necessarily care about the product?

LOIS: The first important thing that you don’t do a commercial that guy looks like he’s shilling. I did an Ovaltine commercial with Joe Namath, and he did it from his heart. I did another with him for Cutty Sark. He had a reputation for being a boozer. A guy saying, “I want my Maypo!” is a put-on of a put-on. It has to be something that has a charm and a wit.

CHIEF MARKETER: What can marketer if its celebrity athlete gets in trouble?

LOIS: You don’t want to run into a Michael Vick situation. Can a guy do something that gets him in trouble? Sure, but that’s never happened with me. I especially like working with athletes because they want to be directed. They really trust you. Even Susan Sarandon, who I just shot for the new cable network American Life. Her daughter says, “I’m a baby of a baby boomer. My mom lived the Woodstock generation. She fought for women’s rights and against the Vietnam War.” They hug. It’s warm and humanistic stuff. Susan Sarandon turns down millions of dollars to do commercials. She did American Life for me because she trusts me. It’s going to be warm and terrific. When we shoot it’s fun. When we finished she said. “My gosh, what a beautiful commercial.” She also did my 1972 Redbook magazine campaign for “young mamas.” She was 18, and gave a great read. Everyone said, “What a great actress!”

CHIEF MARKETER: When the Internet about a decade ago forever changed the media business, did you see the possibilities in what you do?

LOIS:New techniques and new technology all make sense. The computer has changed the way you do advertising. I work with my son who’s incredible with computers. I can do two weeks work in one day. But the Internet and the computer are just tools. The name of the game still comes down to creativity. I taught a class at the School of Visual Arts, and I’m watching this student working on some advertising. I say to him, “What are you working on?” He says, “I’m just kind of playing around.” I ask, “Do you have an idea?” He says, “No.” I say to him, “There are no fucking ideas in that thing. If you want to do something intelligent go into the bathroom, look into the mirror and spend 10 minutes working with yourself. The most intelligent person you’re going to meet is yourself if you know what you’re doing.” Nobody discusses the creativity of it. What’s amazing about the Internet is that you can get facts so fast. I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do this new book without going to the library and spend at least two days a week, all day there to get some basic facts.

CHIEF MARKETER: Do you surf the Web? LOIS: I only do that when I need information. I have a specific idea in my head about something. Your head is thinking about a problem. I’ve always done that. I say to clients, “Let me see your marketing research. I may think it’s bullshit but let me see what you got, what your competitors got.” When you get all that and you still can’t come up with an idea you don’t understand the problem. I am so uninterested in the ads. I never click on them.

CHIEF MARKETER: Any advice for people starting out in the business?

LOIS: If you’re careful, you’re dead. I’m not saying be reckless. Above and beyond your talent and a big idea, there’s got to be a passion and a belief that you can change the world. You’ve got to believe what you create can make a product successful, breakthroughs. I don’t think many agencies believe that. I had this client Data General that was dead. I had people delivering pizza boxes with mainframes. Their stock went up 42 points in one day. It had to be successful.

CHIEF MARKETER:What do you make of the mega agencies of today?

LOIS:That started in the 1980s with Saatchi buying everything in sight, and then the Europeans [also going on agency acquisition binges]. That was the end of exciting times in advertising. All the great creative people sold out. The passion for doing great advertising was gone. New technology confused people. When Bill Bernbach was still alive, people were saying, “It’s like it used to be. It’s no fun any more.” They (DDB) went public.

CHIEF MARKETER:But wasn’t yours the first agency to go public?

LOIS: In retrospect, it was a great mistake because it tore my agency apart. What happened almost immediately, my partners Papert and Koenig would say “that’s going a little too far. George, you can’t do that kind of stuff any more. We’ve got stockholders now. We’ve got to be careful.” I said, “You’ve got to be careful. When your two partners that you started the agency said, “now that we’re successful we have to be careful. We have to be a combination of Ogilvy and Benton & Bowles.” I said “WHAT!? What did you just say to me?” Ogilvy was known for its really intelligent, well-written English advertising. David Ogilvy tried to hire me out of DDB, tripling my salary. I said, “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m the last person you’d want.” He showed me his book, and I picked it up and said: “Mr. Ogilvy, there’s not a word in here I agree with.” He had rules how to do a layout. You can’t drop type out of a half-tone. You can’t this and you can’t do that.” I have no rules. I said, “I don’t think so.” For a couple of years, ‘66 and ‘67, I was really unhappy. I took more than half of the accounts. I was watching the stuff they were doing, and said that’s not great advertising. I wanted to finance new young agencies. I took it to the board, and they turned me down.

CHIEF MARKETER: When you started your own agency, was it out of boredom, ambition or opportunity, or a combination?

LOIS: It was a combination. When I was working in the late 1950s at Doyle Dane— the only creative agency in the world, and believe me, it was—I was still in my twenties. Bill Bernbach was lucky enough to be assigned to work with Paul Rand, a great graphic designer. Maybe he wasn’t a great advertising guy, but he was a breakthrough designer. He was a mentor of mine. I’d look at his work and say, “Gee, you can do exciting work and not be a whore. Bernbach had the epiphany if you work with a terrific visual guy you can do better work. Another guy Bob Gage became the first modern art director. They were who really made Doyle Dane Bernbach a sensation hit in the mid-1950s. Next to Gage was a guy named Bill Taubin. Next to him was Helmut Krone. Then there was me. We were the four best art directors in the history of advertising. It was so thrilling. Each four work was very different from each other. My work was more street talk, grittier, a little bolder, a little more exciting. It rocks you, and then you think about it. It was the most fulfilling creative time of my life. There was great stuff happening. You could see it on TV and in print. There’s no joy like that today. When I left Doyle Dane I was considered the craziest son-of-a-bitch who ever lived. I was a young god there. When I told him Bill was leaving, Bill almost had a heart attack. He said, “How can you do such a thing.” I said, “We want to see if we can start the second great creative agency in America.” He said, “There can only be one great creative agency.” I said, “There can be another great creative agency as long as the creative people run the agency who make the decisions who the clients are, you don’t give into clients and you don’t end up doing bad work.” He said, “I don’t think so George.” We were successful in two weeks. We got the Haloid-Xerox account. I convinced them to change the name to Xerox, and go on television. Everybody thought Xerox was an anti-freeze before this. At Doyle Dane all the art directors’ salaries doubled after I started my agency. Bill said, “I didn’t want you to hire them away.”

CHIEF MARKETER: Why did you turn to direct response TV when MTV asked for your help in the early 1980s?

LOIS:MTV was nowhere after a year. They were dead. Everybody in the business thought MTV was a joke. You had to go the trade, but go to the trade with kick-ass. I convinced [MTV co-founder] Bob Pittman to let me do a television commercial. Everyone said, “We don’t have the money for that.” I said, “I will get a rock star, and managed to get Mick Jagger. I talked him into it. I don’t know how. He’s on time. Behind him is a couple of people. It was Pete Townshend and Pat Benatar. I said I think I have enough film for them too. Jagger told viewers to call their local cable operator, and say “I Want My MTV!” Mick Jagger saved MTV. He literally did. I call him the patron saint of MTV. Nobody gives him credit for it.

So we ran three spots of the Jagger commercial the first night in San Francisco. And 5:30 in the morning San Francisco time, which is 8:30 in New York, the cable operator there called Pittman, “Get that f***** commercial off the air.” So Pittman said, “We’ll take it off right away.” The operator says, “By the way, I’ll take MTV because I’m getting thousands of phone calls.” It grew like wildfire city to city. Seven months later Time had on its cover “America wants its MTV.” The ad agencies were the slowest to get to it because they’re the slowest sons of bitches in the world. A year later I was working for Bristol-Myers, and the head of its media said, “George have you ever heard of a TV channel called MTV because it’s getting very hot and the place to reach young people?” I knew “I Want My MTV!” was a catchy line, and it could become famous. I always said I helped destroyed world culture with the thing.