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" Because advertising and marketing is an art, the solution to each new problem or challenge should begin with a blank canvas and an open mind, not with the nervous borrowings of other people's mediocrities. That's precisely what 'trends' are - a search for something 'safe' - and why a reliance on them leads to oblivion. "

George Lois

Art

Challenge

Problem

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" I've done truth to power all my life. It's got me into trouble, but who cares? "

" I talk to all the creative directors today, and they take me aside, and they say, 'You know, it must have been great back in those days when you could do anything you wanted.' I say, 'Huh? Excuse me?' I mean, we fought. In the '60s and '70s, you fought wars with clients, and you have to continue fighting wars to do great work. "

" Everybody is so busy talking about 'Twittering' and talking about the new technologies and talking about this and that, but they don't talk about creativity. "

" If you think people are dumb, you'll spend a lifetime doing dumb work. "

" You can't test great advertising. You can only test the mediocre. Not that I don't care about demographics. You have to understand who you're going after. "

" When I lecture kids, I say, 'You've got to be ambitious by the advertising' - ambitious. You've got to say, 'See, this product? Maybe I can change the world with this product.' They look at me like I'm nuts, but that's what you can do. "

" A graphic designer, you know, who understands ideas and understands that ideas are what makes the world go round, could change the world with a magazine. If one talent could do it right now, and everybody would stop saying it's the death of magazines. "

" There's no such thing as a cautious creative. "

" When you create advertising, always start with the words. "

" I don't design. I get what I think is a big idea, and I put the idea down. I'm not a designer. I'm a communicator. "

" What I taught myself was that in any problem you get, you've got to come up with an innovative, brilliant, kind of unusual, stunning solution. "

George Lois

Problem

Solution

" The producers of 'Mad Men,' you know, think I hate their show, which is true. "

" If you're working, and you're not trying to be great, give up. "

" All the people who run agencies, all the important people in agencies have taken communication courses, marketing courses, advertising courses, and courses basically teach advertising as a science, and advertising is so far from a science it isn't even funny. Advertising is an art. "

" What Apple did for technology is brilliant, but they didn't do nothin' for our economy. "

" The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything. And I really believe that. And what I try to teach young people, or anybody in any creative field, is that every idea should seemingly be outrageous. "

" If you work with convictions, people have got to listen to you. "

" Ad agencies do all kinds of market research that ask people what they think they want, and instead, you should be creating things that you want. If you do something and you get it, the rest of the world will get it, too. Trust your own instincts, your own intellect, and your own sense of humor. "

" If somebody says to you, 'MTV,' you think of Mick Jagger on a phone screaming at that phone: 'I want my MTV.' That, to me, was always the epitome of great advertising. "

George Lois

Advertising

Think

" When I did 'Esquire,' I did a lot of celebrity covers, but the celebrity cover was Hubert Humphrey as a dummy, sitting on Lyndon Johnson's lap and aping his feelings about the war. I did celebrity covers that made a difference in what was going on in American culture. "

" It's almost as if creativity is dead. The visual power of advertising was everywhere - now it's basically gone. "

" The computer has played a role in destroying creativity with the Photoshop. Everybody thinks they're a designer. "

" Sometimes all the 'marketing' insight in the world can't move a client, but the creation of a truly great brand name can become a billion-dollar idea! "

" You don't create a magazine for your readers. You don't take a poll, you know, like the politicians do, and find out what they're thinking and what they want... You're supposed to be telling people what the hell you think is exciting and dynamic and thought-provoking, and do it - and do it your way. "

" I look in the mirror, and I work with the brightest person I know. "

" With the way I worked, a client can give me everything they know about something, and then I go away and come back with advertising that knocks them out of their chair. They finally understand what kind of a company they are. "

George Lois

Advertising

Back

" I'm sounding like an old fart talking about how bad advertising is today, but it's true. Advertising sucks. Guys like me and Bob Gage and certainly Bill Bernbach and two or three other guys, we exemplified and led the creative revolution. "

" Nobody should force you to do a bad piece of work in your whole life - no client, no creative director, nobody. The job isn't to please the client; the job is to produce something for the client that makes them incredibly successful. "

" Doyle Dane Bernbach was a great, great agency when I got there. There was an arrogance that everyone had, but it was a closed club. I was a guy who worked a little differently. Edgier. More punch-in-the-mouth. "

" Museums are custodians of epiphanies, and these epiphanies enter the central nervous system and deep recesses of the mind. "