The 1960s was a heroic age in the history of the art of communication - the audacious movers and shakers of those times bear no resemblance to the cast of characters in 'Mad Men.'
Whatever the creative industry, when you're confronted with the challenge of coming up with a Big Idea, always work with the most talented, innovative mind available. Hopefully... that's you.
I don't design. I get what I think is a big idea, and I put the idea down. I'm not a designer. I'm a communicator.
Because advertising and marketing is an art, the solution to each new problem or challenge should begin with a blank canvas and an open mind, not with the nervous borrowings of other people's mediocrities. That's precisely what 'trends' are - a search for something 'safe' - and why a reliance on them leads to oblivion.
The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything. And I really believe that. And what I try to teach young people, or anybody in any creative field, is that every idea should seemingly be outrageous.
Museums are custodians of epiphanies, and these epiphanies enter the central nervous system and deep recesses of the mind.
These days, no celebrity on a magazine cover, including Brad Pitt, Oprah Winfrey, Julia Roberts, or Leonardo DiCaprio, could possibly match the visual punch of Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed, grinning boy, goofily peeking out at us on the newsstand.
When I did 'Esquire,' I did a lot of celebrity covers, but the celebrity cover was Hubert Humphrey as a dummy, sitting on Lyndon Johnson's lap and aping his feelings about the war. I did celebrity covers that made a difference in what was going on in American culture.
If somebody says to you, 'MTV,' you think of Mick Jagger on a phone screaming at that phone: 'I want my MTV.' That, to me, was always the epitome of great advertising.
I'm sounding like an old fart talking about how bad advertising is today, but it's true. Advertising sucks. Guys like me and Bob Gage and certainly Bill Bernbach and two or three other guys, we exemplified and led the creative revolution.
I talk to all the creative directors today, and they take me aside, and they say, 'You know, it must have been great back in those days when you could do anything you wanted.' I say, 'Huh? Excuse me?' I mean, we fought. In the '60s and '70s, you fought wars with clients, and you have to continue fighting wars to do great work.
All the people who run agencies, all the important people in agencies have taken communication courses, marketing courses, advertising courses, and courses basically teach advertising as a science, and advertising is so far from a science it isn't even funny. Advertising is an art.
A truly great magazine cover surprises, even shocks, and connects in a nano-second.
Trends can tyrannize; trends are traps. In any creative industry, the fact that others are moving in a certain direction is always proof positive, at least to me, that a new direction is the only direction.
The computer has played a role in destroying creativity with the Photoshop. Everybody thinks they're a designer.
'Mad Men' is nothing more than the fulfillment of every possible stereotype of the early 1960s bundled up nicely to convince consumers that the sort of morally repugnant behavior exhibited by its characters - with one-night-stands and excessive consumption of Cutty Sark and Lucky Strikes - is glamorous and 'vintage.'
To me, great advertising can make food taste better, can make your car run smoother. It can change your perception of something. Is it wrong to change your perception about something? Of course not. I'm not lying; I'm just saying, 'This one's more fun, this one's more exciting.'
When I teach classes at the School of Visual Arts,, I'll ask the students, 'How many of you have been to a museum this year?' Nobody raises their hand and I go into a tirade. If you want to do something sharp and innovative, you have to know what went on before.
