The Mrs. and I recently watched “Art & Copy,” Doug Pray’s 2009 documentary that features some of the biggest names in the history of American advertising, people like Lee Clow “one of the creators of Apple’s “1984” campaign”, George Lois, “”I Want My MTV“”, Dan Wieden and David Kennedy “”Just Do It”” and Hal Riney “”Morning in America“”.
It’s a fascinating and powerful film that lets a group of very creative people talk about what makes them tick. I recommend it to anyone who spends any time thinking about how to influence the opinion of others.
I was struck by how many of the breakthrough campaigns seemed to revolve around one key phrase that some clever person came up with, maybe scrawled on the back of a napkin. “Got milk?”, for instance, or “Where’s the beef?”
Clarity, brevity, originality and audacity are common characteristics of great ad concepts. Heck, great concepts in general.
In a fascinating and somewhat eerie revelation, Dan Wieden said the inspiration for “Just Do It” came from Gary Gilmore, the convicted murderer who, when asked if he had any last words, replied, “Let’s do it.”
There are a few key characteristics shared by the men and women in the film. Obviously, they are all very smart and creative. But nearly every one of them said something to the effect of, “We had to show our clients that we were right and they were wrong.” Most of them had a story about a risky campaign that went on to be a breakthrough that scared hell out of their clients at first.
Nobody gets asked to be in a documentary because they played it safe. If – and I’m not saying this will or should happen – anybody makes a documentary in 20 years about the early days of social media, who will they want to talk to? Probably the people who are scaring the hell out of clients right now. The audacious people with the outrageous ideas who are 100 percent convinced that laying yourself and your company open is the right thing to do.
What would you rather say to a documentary filmmaker in 20 years? “We tried cool new stuff and a lot of it worked really well”? Or “We played it safe and jumped on the bandwagon near the end”?
photo by Digging90650