Damn Good Advice (for people with talent!) – in the lead-up to Cannes Gawen Rudder reviews the classic little book by the great George Lois

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Gawen Rudder reviews ‘Damn Good Advice’, a classic little book from U.S. ad legend George Lois, who will be on stage with fellow legend Lee Clow in Cannes this year.

Sometime last year, CB publisher Michael Lynch was in New York for the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame Awards, and caught up with a couple of advertising legends – two men who – although separated by more than forty years – have truly earned that over-used sobriquet, ‘legend.’ Of the elder, he offered me his opinion, “He makes a bloody sight more sense than some of today’s younger wannabe gurus.”

Michael was not referring to that younger (well, mid-fortyish) Aussie expatriate recipient David Droga. No. He did however spend some time with the aging but feisty winner of that self-same award back in 1978. His name: George Lois, a Bronx-born, son of Greek immigrants, best known for the 92 brilliant covers he designed for Esquire magazine from 1962-1972, but celebrated here for his sage and sometimes salacious advice and strangely endearing profanity.

The two men are in good company. Amongst the distinguished Art Directors laureates, latter and present day heroes, are advertising greats Alex Bogusky, Sir John Hegarty, Dan Wieden, David Kennedy, Lee Clow and Jay Chiat; plus the likes of Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, Jim Henson and Issey Miyake. All evidence that advertising, art and culture can be clustered together under the umbrella of commercial creativity.

If you know anything about George Lois, or have seen footage of him in full flight a few years back in Art & Copy (available from pbs.org), you might have guessed the working title of Damn Good Advice would have been conceived in more explicit language. For all his opiniated genius and self-belief, Lois is a man unafraid of telling it how he thinks adland should be.

Number 108 of his 120 pieces of full-coloured and colourful advice reads, “Why the fuck didn’t you make it that way in the first place?” – his reference to making the perfect Bloody Mary.

A big talker, like Australia’s recently departed Bryce (Courtenay), he has been accused several times of taking credit for others’ ideas and perhaps exaggerating his participation. His latest book – from which much of this article is drawn – Damn Good Advice is his twelfth; not a scratch on Courtney’s prolific twenty-one, but none the less, a pretty decent bibliography.

Back in 2008, The New York Times published a correction that stated the ‘Think Small’ Volkswagen ad campaign was not created, as he had claimed, by George Lois. The article correctly identified DDB’s Julian Koenig and Helmut Krone as the authors. Lois has often asserted that he named and designed the New York magazine. In his 1991 book What’s the Big Idea?  he states, “Let me say right now, with my hand on the Bible, I, George Lois, created New York magazine.” Umm … not so. Not according to the magazine’s first editor.

Lois was demobbed from the Korean War at about the same age as Droga would have been when he graduated from AWARD School as its top student. Moving from design to advertising, where Lois had been warned, “You can’t go out there, the ad world is terrible, they’re all Philistines, they’re all hacks,” he eventually landed on his feet at Doyle Dane Bernbach. And then, as was his wont, did something insane: went to Bernbach and told him he was leaving to start, “The second (great) creative agency in the world: Papert, Koenig, Lois” – two writers and garrulous art director George. “After a couple, one, two, or three years, coming out of PKL were two other agencies: Carl Ally and his partner Amil Gargano; and then another guy left the agency and went into business with Mary Wells to start Wells Rich Greene. By the mid-sixties I realized – that with starting that second creative agency – I had triggered something called ‘the creative revolution’ in advertising. Leaving Doyle Dane Bernbach was a giant part of it obviously, and then with another three or four agencies coming out of my agency, it was the most heroic age in media communications since the twelve apostles.”

Lois wrote a book in 1972 called George Be Careful. Basically, it was about growing up in New York, where he became, in his own words, “One of the wunderkinds of the New York School of Design.”  He called his book George be Careful because, “When I was a kid, I remember the hand of God coming into my bedroom, it was Michelangelo’s hand, and it said, ‘George, be careful,’ and my mother told me, ‘Be careful.’ My father, my sisters, my coaches in sports, when I went into the army, they’re telling me to be careful. And then when you go into advertising, that’s when everybody tells you to be careful.  Anything, anything unusual, anything over the top, anything edgy … you can’t do that. So, ‘George, Be Careful’ was my anti-slogan.”  

Some years later, the producers of Mad Men called him and he said, “If you want to know anything about the advertising of the sixties, read my book. Goodbye. Fuck you.”  

cvr2-damn-good-advice-2d.jpgSome more reasoned discourse from George Lois:

On Mad Men: The producers think I hate their show. Which is true. It’s a dumb show. 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. This maddening show is nothing but a soap opera, set in a glamorous office where stylish fools hump their appreciative, coiffured secretaries, suck up martinis, and smoke themselves to death as they produce dumb, lifeless advertising – oblivious to the inspiring Civil Rights movement, the burgeoning Women’s Lib movement, the evil Vietnam War, and other seismic changes during the turbulent, roller-coaster 1960s that altered America forever.

(One gets the feeling he didn’t care too much for what he dubbed, “Those phony ‘Gray Flannel Suit’ male-chauvinist, no-talent, WASP, white-shirted racist, anti-Semitic Republican, SOBs.” Besides, he claimed, “When I was in my thirties I was far better looking than Don Draper!”)

On Art Directors: Most art directors don’t sit and try to write the idea: They usually wait with their thumbs up their ass for a writer to furnish the words, which usually are not visually pregnant.

On Creativity: It is there for us to find – it is an act of discovery. Michelangelo said that a sculpture is imprisoned in a block of marble, and only a great sculptor can set it free. (Brett Whiteley enthused at his discovery of, “The calligraphy of dog wees in Paris, I’ve never seen dogs piss so beautifully, so Japanese-like.” Typical of his larrikin humour.)

On Humour: A creative person without a sense of humour has a serious problem. In all forms of communication, humour is a natural way to win someone’s heart.                                                                                           

On Trends: Trends are a trap, trends can tyrannize. What is the next big trend? – beats the shit out of me.

On Teamwork: Teamwork might work in building an Amish barn, but it can’t create a Big Idea. The accepted system for the creation of innovative thinking in a democratic environment is to work cooperatively in a team-like ambience. Don’t believe it.

On Relationships: If you’re in a relationship with your boss, supervisor, partner or client and you suspect you are continually being used and/or abused … end it. Never eat shit. (If it looks like shit, and smells like shit … it is shit.)

On Truth: Picasso was right when he said, “Art is a lie that tells the truth.” In advertising his ‘lie’ becomes the truth. Cars drive better. Food tastes better. Perfume smells better. If you find it hard to agree with this basic belief, you may find it extremely difficult to understand the magic of advertising.

On PR: All your ad campaigns must be built-in PR campaigns. (It’s called ‘talkability.’) If your advertising doesn’t have the power to become a topic of conversation for everyone in the nation, you forfeit the chance for it to be famous.

On Selling: Even a brilliant idea won’t sell itself. (See ‘George presents to a difficult client.’ below) Always do three things when you present the Big Idea:

1. Tell them what they are going to see.

2. Show it to them.

3. Tell them, dramatically, what they just saw.

On Persistence: Woody Allen was right: “80 per cent of life is showing up.” Never give in, never give up.  Think on your feet, make things happen, impress clients, not only with your work, but with your hustle, desire, and chutzpah!

On Slogans: Most great slogans have the brand name in the slogan, even twice!. (Think Mo & Jo’s, “I feel like a Tooheys, I feel like a Tooheys, I feel like a Tooheys, or two …” That’s three times and only the opening stanza.)

On Google: Fishing on the computer, frantically looking, searching, praying for an idea is useless. Don’t sit down at your computer until you’ve grasped a big concept.

On Music: Never listen to music when you’re trying to come up with a Big Idea. (The hugely successful old master of Australian art, Lloyd Rees said, “I don’t like music when I’m painting, I step into another world, I feel caught up in another set of values.”)

On Tweeting: Stop tweeting your life away and do something productive: Learn to draw. (As AWARD School students know, an idea can be communicated better with a drawing, no matter how basic.)

On Emails: How about using proper English in your emails for a change? Learn to write one singular, coherent, informative, insightful, spectacular sentence to replace your illiterate off-the-cuff twittering?

On Bigness: The only thing that gets better when it gets bigger is a penis. (Jay Chiat used to ask himself, “How big can we get before we get bad?”)

On Age: If you’re approaching 50 years of age, remember that oak trees do not produce acorns until they are 50 years old.

George Lois is 82 years of age. His family name can be traced back to 265 B.C. when it was originally ‘Logos.’ In ancient Greek ‘logos’ meant, ‘word, reason or speech.’ Aristotle applied the term to refer to, ‘reasoned discourse.’

Gawen Rudder is manager, membership, business services & Advice of The Communications Council, Sydney