Lee Clow is the ad legend behind the most incredible adverts Apple ever created, like ‘1984’ and ‘Think Different’. This is a thread with 20 of his most interesting thoughts on advertising and creative excellence.

1) "The job isn't to just do ads. The job is to find the soul of a brand, work a creative story and find rich, interesting ways to create it in the world. That means everything is media. Everything is an ad. The word 'advertising' makes it smaller than ambition."

2) "Shocking is easy. Shockingly brilliant, a bit more challenging."

3) “The Monday after ‘1984,’ there were lots of agency types who basically said, ‘That's the most irresponsible commercial that was ever done. They didn’t even show the product…' But I'd rather apologize than to be so timid as to not to try and do anything smart or brave.”

4) "Everything a brand does is advertising."

5) "Technology is not a substitute for an idea. It’s the thing that can nurture and allow ideas to be bigger."

6) "I always felt lots of people had more god-giving talent than me in terms of artistic talent, design talent but I saw them accomplish a lot less, because they didn’t care (about the work) as much as I did. Your basic skill set is just a starting point."

7) “We must learn how all media elements (old and new) can, and should, work together to do what the job has always been – to invite people to meet, know, trust and, hopefully, love your brand; not just for what you make, but for why you make it.”

8) "Good enough isn't good enough,"

9) “The makeup of a creative person is a lot of ego and drive and also a lot of insecurity. Most creative people never know if they’re any good. If they decide they’re good, they’re probably not that good. To this day, everything I look at, I see something wrong with it."

10) "I've never found a client's business problem that could be solved solely through advertising."

11) “What’s throwing our industry for a loop is the complexity of putting messages out there in the world with all these new tools and all this new technology. I think a search for simplicity and pure ideas is the only route back to making it more fun again.”

12) "The best revenge is a better ad."

13) I consider myself now as a media artist, not an advertising person, because advertising is kind of defined these days and has a negative stigma attached to it. But to be a media artist is to take a brand, find its voice, tell its story and make it interesting."

14) Speaking of the way that the Apple product packing is a comms messaging as well: “When you open an Apple product, it’s like a religious experience."

15) "The rare brands have somebody at the top that has a point of view and a belief system. They are the best clients."

16) “Brands think there’s a new shortcut to their audience with social media. They think that they don’t need to build a story, have a conversation about who they are, that they can just reach out and ask people to buy before they have a relationship with the brand."

17) “The fun of telling brand stories is finding the things about it that are exciting or interesting or funny that make a brand into a personality that you like and admire.”

18) “Everyone has the desire to be brave but you need to be put in the circumstance where you’re allowed to be brave.”

19) “We’re supposed to find the status quo and punch a hole in it. Find the convention and go 180° away from it.”

20) “I believe what we do is more of an art form than a science.”

21) Lee has done some of the most memorable ads on the planet, from Apple's "1984", “Think Different” and "Mac Vs PC" to Nike and the introduction of "Air Jordan", to the Energizer bunny and the ‘Impossible is Nothing’ Adidas campaign. Lee is an advertising legend.

22) Here are some of the sources for this thread:
https://www.adforum.com/tribune/ten-ways-to-think-like-lee-clow


https://easyreadernews.com/lee-clow-thought-different/
https://www.oneclub.org/hall-of-fame/-bio/lee-clow
https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/02/14/lee-clow-retires/
https://mag.citizensofhumanity.com/blog/2015/12/10/lee-clow/
https://easyreadernews.com/lee-clow-thought-different/ https://findingmastery.net/lee-clow/ 

23) Lastly, here’s a photo of Lee with his favorite, and most important, client, Steve Jobs. This photo was taken in 2000 when Apple received the Grand Effie award for their advertising excellence.

24) I'll end this thread with the TBWA 'Disrupt Manifesto', about the importance of creating brave work. Written and narrated by Lee.