Images above courtesy of Chiatday.com and Advertising Age.

                Lee Clow, the very mention of the name, to most people in the advertising anyway, resonates with power and creativity.  Clow has been the Creative Director at TBWA\Chiat\Day for nearly 30 years now.  That’s unheard of in an industry where creatives work at different companies like most people eat at different restaurants.  In a typical 30 year span over a creative’s career you wouldn’t be shocked to see them holding 10 different jobs at 10 different companies.  This consistence doesn’t just lay in his ability to stay in one place.  Indeed, it permeates everything he does.  Lee Clow has been responsible for some of the most creative advertising in the world today and every few years he just keeps outdoing himself. 

     This consistence comes from his view of advertising as not so much a business but an art.  This might help explain the fact that he dresses more like an artist than an advertising genius.  For if you were to find Clow, deep in the bowels of Chiat\Day’s creative department, you would undoubtedly find the man in a T-shirt and shorts shuffling around in the sandals that his coworkers claim he must never take off. 

                 Clow is not only recognized by hopeful creatives who aspire to work under him but his work is admired by experts in the field.  He is currently a part of the One Club Hall of Fame, the Art Directors Hall of Fame, and the Museum of Modern Art's Advertising Hall of Fame.  He believes that the only way to make successful advertising is to focus on the work at hand and not to follow set guidelines or rules.  Creativity seems to be a more ethereal thing to Clow, not to be defined or classified, but merely to be desired and sought out.  

                He has been accused of being concerned more about entertaining the customer than selling the product to which he has responded, “I don't think I'm an icon or a poster boy for a particular kind of advertising…What I’ve built in my lifetime is the Chiat\Day brand, and I think I’ve contributed a lot to its soul and philosophy” (Vagnoni, p. 23).  Whatever his reasons or motivation for his work, the public is always entertained by his visions and perhaps that is what makes his advertising so successful.