“Plus, I was better looking than him in those days.�
GEORGE LOIS LIFE
Early life and career “I’m 35 and too young to die!” Julius Koenig on George Lois “He would take credit for everything”
THE MAN
Ego Risk When asked if he’d ever failed
ADS
“This cats a Catholic!” 25 cents a leg No product, no ingredients, no logo “I want my MTV!”
CITATIONS
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GEORGE SAYS HE’S BROKEN A LOT OF NOSES.
“I count nine broken noses of my own.”
BORN
- 1931, North Bronx. - Parents were Greek immigrants. - Liked fist fights and drawing. - Encouraged to persue art by teacher
HIGH SCHOOL - School of Music & Art
COLLEGE
- Drops out
REBA SOCHIS
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KOREA
-1954 - Punches “Fat Cracker Sergeant” - Honorable discharge
CBS
- Works as art director for Bill Golden
LENNEN & NEWELL - 1957 - Flips a desk in outrage, storms out
SUDLER & HENNESSEY - Works under Herb Lubalin
DDB
-Doyle Dane Bernbach - First “creative” ad agency - Pioneered “New Advertising” with artist/writer teams - Wins 3 gold medals from NY Art Directors Club - Threatens to throw self from 3rd story window to sell matzoh ad - “You make the matzoh, I’ll make the ads!”
PKL
- 1960 - Papert Koenig Lois - Worth $40 million after 7 years - Second “creative” ad agency - First modern at agency to go public - First big business launched by a modern art director - Other companies follow suite
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8
“I’M 35 AND
TOO YOUNG TO DIE!”
George Lois and the success of PKL
In 1960, Lois left Doyle Dane Bernbach with Fred Papert and Julian Koenig to start PKL: Papert, Koenig, Lois. Like DDB, PKL was a “creative” ad agency, and challenged the notion that there could only be one such agency on Madison Avenue. They continued the DDB tradition of putting artists and copywriters into creative teams. They started from nothing, but after seven years PKL was worth $40 million, and become the first big business to be launched by a modern art director like George Lois. In 1962, PKL was the first modern ad agency to go public. Lois proved that with the right amount of business savvy and raw talent, advertisers, art directors, and other creatives could move beyond the goals
that were typically set for them. Older companies followed PKL’s example by going commercial, and many new creative ad agencies sprung up, following in PKL’s footsteps. Many were very successful. In 1967, Lois left PKL to start from scratch once more. Perhaps he felt trapped by the success of PKL, or that there was nothing more to achieve. Lois is a man who needs a challenge. Up till this point he hadn’t stopped breaking down barriers of some sort, perhaps he didn’t see any reason to stop. “I’m 35 and too young to die!” was all he said of why he left. His next agency, LHC, quickly became successful as well and in 1969, Ad Age named him one of 1968’s top 10 newsmakers.
“IN MY LIFE, THE GREATES WAS MY ONE TIME PARTN THE MOST HERALDED AND DESIGNER, AND HIS TALEN HIS OMNIVOROUS EGO.”
“REGARDLESS OF WHO OR THE WORK, THE WORD ‘W EVAPORATED FROM GEO VOCABULARY AND IT BEC
‘MY.’”
ST PREDATOR TO MY WORK NER, GEORGE LOIS, WHO IS D TALENTED ART DIRECTOR, NT IS ONLY EXCEEDED BY Julian Koenig on Lois’s ego
RIGINATED WE’ ORGE’S CAME
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“HE WOULD TAK
KE CREDIT FOR EVERYTHING” Fred Papert on Lois
George Lois is an incredible innovator. He has left a permanent mark on the world of advertising and has an enormous body of work. Lois has been accused multiple times throughout his career by various coworkers and agencies for not crediting ideas or exaggerating how big a part he played. Koenig and Papert claim that Lois’s ‘Maypo’ ad was the work of the three cofounders, not solely Lois. Lois also claims to have made the first commercial for Xerox, and talks about the procees at length during an interview with Vice.
“When he said that he helped get the Xerox ad, that was a bit too far. He had nothing whatsoever to do with it.” said Fred Papert.
George Lois takes credit for the Nickelodeon logo on his website, but the owners of Nickelodeon, Fred/ Alan, worked directly with designers Tom Corey and Scott Nash to design the logo. New York Magazine also refutes Lois’s claims that he designed their logo. When VICE asked Lois to respond to the accusations, Lois said he “wouldn’t
dignify the claims with an answer, that he hadn’t lied or stolen ideas, and the notion he had to defend himself was insulting.”
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EGO George Lois was certainly a man who did what he wanted. He had an ego. Everything he did seemed monumental, and he lent that worldview to his ads as well. If your HarveyProbber chair is wobbling, the only solution is to straighten your floor! Is Billy coughing? Go get him some Coldene! His products seem so powerful, they’re immortal and his ads present this world where answers are so obvious it’s a wonder you didn’t notice before. Lois’s products become the answer, literally in the case of his ‘Perhaps’ perfume ads.
16 “IF YOU’RE A CREATIVE PERSON YOU CAN BE CAUTIOUS OR YOU CAN BE A CREATIVE. YOU CAN’T BE A CAUTIOUS CREATIVE. IF YOU’RE A
CAUTIOUS CREATIVE, YOU’RE A BUM!”
RISK Essentially, you can’t be innovative without taking a risk. An element of greatness is succeeding where others have failed or succeeding where no one else has gone before. There is no safety net when it comes to proposing new, untried ideas. There is a leap of faith you need to take, one that requires a certain amount of self-confidence, that it needed. George Lois rose to the top due to a combination of raw talent, ruthless self-advertising, and, as Julian Koenig once said, an omnivorous ego..
“YOU NEVER LEARN ANYT MISTAKE! IF YOU LEARN AN A MISTAKE, YOU LEARN TO AND THE MINUTE THAT YOU
YOU’RE DEAD!
SO WHEN PEOPLE S
‘ANY FUCK UPS
‘I DON’T R
THING FROM A
NYTHING FROM
O BE CAREFUL U’RE CAREFUL
SAY,
S?’
I SAY:
REMEMBER.’”
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CITATIONS Lois, George, and Bill Pitts. The Art of Advertising: George Lois on Mass Communication. 1st ed. Vol. 1. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977. Print. The Real Don Draper From ‘Mad Men’? Prod. Gianna Toboni and Scott Pierce. Perf. Gianna Toboni, George Lois. YouTube. VICE, 23 Feb. 2015. Web. 14 Mar. 2015 Heller, Steven. “Reputations: George Lois.” Eye Magazine 1 Aug. 1998. Print Seibert, Fred. “The Nickelodeon Logo, Designed by Tom Corey & Scott Nash.” The Fred/Alan Archive 1983-1992. Fred/Alan, 1 Jan. 2010. Web. 1 Mar. 2015. <http://fredalan.