An Ad Man Who Hates "Mad Men"

Question: How did you get into advertising?

George\r\n Lois: Well, I started in advertising, after the High School of \r\nMusic and Art, that was all, that was basically my graphic arts \r\ntraining, as far as I'm concerned, it was, you know, it was four \r\nincredible years.  I then went to Pratt Institute and I met my future \r\nwife that first day of school, and I was nuts about her. And I realized \r\nafter one or two, after a week of Pratt that they weren't anywhere near \r\nas the High School of Music and Art, but I stuck it out, because I \r\nwasn't about to leave her.  And I went through the first year and then \r\nthe second year, I didn't quite know what to do, and I knew the school \r\nwas so awful.  But I went to my first classes at the second year, and \r\nagain, I ran into another great mentor, a teacher by the name of \r\nHerschel Levit, and he looked at my, and he saw what I did for him and \r\nhe said, "George, why are you, why are you in school?"  And I said, "I'm\r\n trying to make a living, you know?"  And he said, "No, no, get out of \r\nhere, you're not going to learn any more here," and he gave me a piece \r\nof paper with a woman's name—a woman art director, which was very unique\r\n back then—who had an art studio, and she sent me to him the next, and I\r\n went there the next morning and I left school in the, in my second, \r\nbefore my, actually my second year started.  And she did promotion and \r\nadvertising, et cetera, it was a great, great first job because she was a\r\n superb designer. What happened was I lost my exemption in the army, it \r\nwas during the Korean War, and I got drafted and wound up going to \r\nKorea, came back alive... and she wanted me to be a partner with her, \r\nand I didn't want to.  And she said, "What do you want to do?"  "I \r\nreally want to work at CBS Television," because it was a really dynamic \r\ntime in corporate imagery and corporate design with the great Bill \r\nGolden at the head of it, they had just done the CBS eye, et cetera.  So\r\n I went in at CBS and it was incredible atelier of design and \r\nadvertising.  But somehow, it wasn't the big, it wasn't the big time \r\nadvertising, you know, worked on products, et cetera.

And from \r\nthere, and so I left there, you know, and Bill Golden said to me in '53 \r\nor '54, whatever it was, '54, "George, you can't go out there, it's a \r\nworld of, the ad world is terrible, they're all Philistines, they're all\r\n hacks."  And he was right, you know, he said, "You're not going to be \r\nhappy there, they're not going to appreciate your talent."  And I said, \r\n"Well, I," well, somehow, something drove me to do it, and ... the job I\r\n went to was pretty awful, and a lot of stories... seemingly apocryphal \r\nbut actually true... when I kind of acted up in my first agency and \r\noverturned a desk, etc., did some kind of crazy stuff.

After that\r\n I went, and I worked with some of the great, other great pioneers in \r\nadvertising, and advertising designer, Herb Lubalin and I worked, then I\r\n went to Doyle Dane Bernbach and worked for Bill Bernbach and Bob Gage. \r\n And again, I did something insane: I left Doyle Dane, I went to Bill \r\nBernbach and I told him I was leaving to start the second creative \r\nagency in the world, because Bill Bernbach had started the only creative\r\n agency in the world.  And the reason he started it, it was based on the\r\n fact that he had worked with Paul Rand early in his career and somehow \r\nhe understood that if you worked with good, terrific graphic designer, \r\nespecially one who was prolific and could write like Paul Rand, that you\r\n could do better advertising if you worked, if the art director could \r\nwork, could conceive advertising with the writer... up to that time, \r\nbasically all advertising was, the art director sat in his room with his\r\n thumb up his ass and waited for the creative director, for the \r\ncopywriter to come in and throw him a piece of paper and say, "Make a \r\nlayout."  You know, "Lay this out," and the layouts were, you know, \r\nthese typical, awful, you know, unambitious layouts.

So I left \r\nDoyle Dane Bernbach and when I left Doyle Dane Bernbach, Bill Bernbach \r\nsaid to me, "George, you don't know what's out there."  You know, the \r\nthey could, and he literally said that Doyle Dane Bernbach was basically\r\n a creative freak, that somehow they were miraculous, a group of people \r\nthat somehow together could forget a great advertising, and it couldn't \r\nhappen again, not in this Philistine world.  But I started an agency \r\ncalled Papert, Koenig, Lois, with two writers actually, and we were \r\nsuccessful almost immediately, almost immediately.  And then after a \r\ncouple, one, two, or three years, coming out of my agency were two other\r\n agencies, you know, Carl Ally and a guy named [...] and then another \r\nguy left my agency and started, went into business with Mary Wells and \r\nstarted, Wells Rich Greene, and before you knew it, by the mid '60's, \r\nyou know, I realized that I had triggered, with starting that second \r\ncreative agency, I had triggered something called the creative \r\nrevolution in advertising.  And it became the golden age of advertising,\r\n I mean, the '60's and '70's, basically was the golden age of \r\nadvertising, in advertising.

Question:  How true is the\r\n show "Mad Men" to the atmosphere back then?

George Lois:\r\n The producers of "Mad Men," you know, think I hate their show, which is\r\n true.  You know, when they first started the show, before it premiered,\r\n I got a call from one of the producers and he said, "You know, we're \r\nlooking at, we're shooting, we're doing little spots with the people who\r\n were the original 'mad men,'" he said, "Of the period.  And, you know, \r\nwe're shooting it," and he named four, five, or six people. I had never \r\nheard of a couple of them.  "And whoever we talk to mentions your \r\nname."  I said, "Time out.  You're doing a show on the advertising of \r\nthe '60's and you never heard my name?"  He said, "Oh, no, we've heard \r\nyour name."  I said, "Bullshit, you never heard my name."  "Well, \r\nokay."  I said, "If you want to know what happened in the '60's, if you \r\nwant a real understanding of what happened in the '60's, I did a book in\r\n 1972 called 'George Be Careful.'" Which is basically, you know, my \r\nstory about growing up in New York and, you know, growing up in the New \r\nYork School of Design, I became one of the wunderkinds of the New York \r\nSchool of Design, and how I started, you know, the second creative \r\nagency in the world and how that became the creative... it's all about \r\nthe '60's, etc."  And I called it "George Be Careful" because when I was\r\n a kid, you know, I remember the hand of God coming into my bedroom, you\r\n know, it was Michelangelo’s hand, and it said, "George, be careful," \r\nand my mother, my mother told me, that George, all my life, my mother \r\ntold me "Be careful." My father, my sisters, my coaches in sports, you \r\nknow, my, when I went into the army they're telling me to be careful.  \r\nAnd then when you go into advertising, that's when everybody tells you \r\nto be careful, you know?  Anything, you know, anything unusual, anything\r\n over the top, anything edgy, you can't do that.  So "George, Be \r\nCareful" was my anti-slogan.  "And if you wanted to know anything about \r\nthe advertising of the '60's and the advertising world of the '60's, \r\nread that book.  Goodbye."  You know, and was saying fuck you... and he \r\ncalled me back a couple days later, I had told him to go get the book at\r\n Amazon because it was out of print.  He called me up a couple days \r\nlater and he says, "Oh, Jesus, wow, we could have done the show on \r\nthat!"  I said, "No, shit," you know, because that was the '60's, \r\nanybody who knows anything about the media world, anything, you know, \r\nanything about it, when you mention the '60's and you mention \r\nadvertising in the '60's, they don't think, now they think of "Mad Men,"\r\n of that dumb show.  Before that they thought of it as a heroic age, of \r\nreally, of the age that I was talking about, about... leaving Doyle Dane\r\n Bernbach was a giant part of it obviously, and then with another three \r\nor four agencies after that kind of came out of my agency, that was the \r\nmost heroic age in media communications since the twelve apostles.

Recorded April 5, 2010.