Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - When You've Got It, Flaunt It: The George Lois Story

Episode Date: February 26, 2023

In this episode, we talk about one of the legends of the advertising business – George Lois. Out-spoken and fearless, he launched Xerox, helped elect Robert F. Kennedy, designed famous Esquire magazine covers and even once climbed out onto a window ledge to convince a client to buy an idea.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. Your teeth look whiter than no nose. You're not you when you're hungry. You're in good hands with all the teeth. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. Back in 1964, a movie titled Zorba the Greek hit theaters. The story was about two men.

Basil is an Englishman. He is an unhappy writer who leads a dull, uptight existence and finds no joy in life. He always says and does what is expected of him. His life is predictable. His future is gray. He discovers he has been left an inheritance that includes a small, decrepit coal mine in Greece. Basil decides to sail to Greece

to try and reopen it. While on the ship, he meets Zorba. Zorba is a Greek bear of a man with an extraordinary zest for life. He possesses a wall-shaking laugh and big appetites. When he asks Basil what he does for a living, Basil tells him he is a writer. Zorba looks at him and says,

He tells Basil that he used to be a miner and can help him restore the mine. Even though Basil and Zorba are polar opposites, Basil accepts his offer, and an unexpected friendship begins to grow. Actor Alan Bates was cast as the shy, introverted Basil. Anthony Quinn turns in a career-defining performance as Zorba. Throughout the entire film, Zorba tries to pull Basil out of his shell. But Basil resists, saying,

I don't want any trouble. Zorba grabs him by the collar and says, Life is trouble. To be alive is to look for trouble. Basil prefers his solitary life is trouble. To be alive is to look for trouble. Basil prefers his solitary life of books. Zorba bites into life like he is devouring a sumptuous meal. But Basil slowly begins to realize that Zorba really holds the key to life, and that begins to rub off on Basil. Zorba takes the shy Basil under his arm and teaches him how to deal with life's ups and downs. When Zorba is happy, he dances with wild abandon.

He tells Basil he also dances when he's sad, because it takes the pain away. Soon, Zorba comes up with an elaborate plan to try and save the mine, but when he executes it, it is a complete and utter disaster. Everything comes tumbling down. In the last scene of the movie, Zorba and Basil sit in the rubble of the failed attempt and share some food and wine. That's when Zorba the Greek imparts some advice to his friend. Damn it, boss. I like you too much not to say it.

You've got everything, except one thing. Madness. A man needs a little madness, or else... Or else? He never dares cut the rope and be free. Today I want to tell you a story about another famous Greek. He was a legend in the advertising business. He was a bear of a man.

He was big and loud and fearless. At a time when Madison Avenue was uptight, gray and boring, he shook it by the collar. His name was George Lois. And he had more than a little of that good madness Zorba was talking about. You're under the influence. George Lois was born in New York in 1931. His parents had emigrated from Greece years earlier. His father ran a florist shop,

and young George would work in the store and make deliveries. Lois was raised in a very Irish area of the West Bronx. Being the only Greek family in the neighborhood, he was picked on a lot. So George Lois learned to fight. He won some and he lost some. His nose got rearranged, but he never backed down. In school, a teacher noticed that Lois had a talent for drawing and encouraged him.

Even though Lois was athletic and was offered a basketball scholarship in 1949, he chose to study graphic design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn instead. That was a big decision. Not between basketball and graphic design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn instead. That was a big decision, not between basketball and graphic design, but whether to break from the Greek tradition of staying in the family business. George's father expected him to become a florist and eventually take over the store. But art was in George's veins, not Gladiola's.

In the middle of the second year at the Pratt Institute, two things happened. He met a woman he would stay married to for the rest of his life, and his teacher told him he should be working in advertising. He sent George to interview at a graphic design studio. They liked George's work and offered to hire him as an artist for $35 a week. So George decided to quit college and take the full-time job. He couldn't believe he was being paid to create artwork. It was a dream come true.

Except for one problem. Quitting college meant he no longer qualified for a deferment and was immediately drafted into the Korean War. Lois saw action in Korea where he suffered a shrapnel injury. He also had a knack for insubordination. When he was finally discharged, he returned to New York to resume his career in graphic design. He managed to land a job at CBS

to work under the legendary Bill Golden. Golden was a renowned designer who had created the famous CBS Eye logo. He also oversaw the advertising for all CBS programs. It was there Lois learned you had to fight to sell good work. Because Bill Golden

was fearless. One day, Lois watched Golden present ideas to the CBS brass. They turned them all down. Golden took the ads, tore them to pieces, threw the confetti at them,

and slammed the boardroom door so hard the handle came off in his hand. The feisty Lois had found a kindred spirit. When Golden sent one of his designers to present an ad to TV star Jackie Gleason, Gleason threw the designer out of his office. When Golden heard, he marched over to Gleason's office and the two nearly got into a fistfight.

Gleason approved the ad. It was a lesson that would completely inform Lois' career. George Lois' dream was to find a job on Madison Avenue. So he quit CBS and took a job at an advertising agency called Lennon & Newell. One day, George was given an assignment for American Airlines, and he sketched up two dozen potential ads. He presented them to the ad agency's vice president by spreading the ads on the floor of the executive's office. The VP turned his nose up at the work

and proceeded to walk all over the layouts. Lois was incensed. He quietly rolled up all the ads, then grabbed the edge of the VP's desk and tipped it over, then calmly walked back to his office. George soon quit and got a job at another agency, but he still wasn't happy.

That's when he sent a letter to Bill Burnback. Bill Burnback was the co-founder and creative boss of Doyle Dane Burnback, or DDB as it was known. As I've said many times, DDB was leading a creative revolution on Madison Avenue. Burnback emphasized stunning visuals and simple, truthful writing. He brought wit to advertising, perfectly showcased in his agency's ads for Volkswagen. It was that revolutionary work that prompted Lois to send a letter to Bill Bernbach.

That letter would land Lois a job at the fabled ad agency. Previous to DDB, ad writers were valued and art directors weren't. Writers wrote the ads, then sent them to a bullpen of art directors to do the layout. But Bill Bernbeck valued art directors

and revolutionized the ad business by pairing art directors with writers to work together. That thinking appealed to George Lois because he wanted respect for his ideas.

He would get that from Burnback. The clients were another story. One of George's first assignments at DDB was to create a subway poster for Goodman's matzahs. The unleavened flatbread is an integral part of Passover, so the poster was to advertise the matzahs in time for the Jewish celebration. So Lois came up with an idea he liked. When a DDB account executive came back from the presentation,

he told Lois that the CEO of Goodman's had turned his poster idea down. When Lois asked why, the account guy just shrugged his shoulders. That didn't fly with Lois. So he insisted on going to see the client himself. The account man warned Lois that he was poking his crooked nose into a buzzsaw. The owner of Goodman's matzahs was a tyrant. Lois was undaunted. When George walked into the office of the Goodman's owner, he began his pitch. When he unraveled the poster, the owner immediately said,

I don't like it. Lois said, wait, this is a gorgeous poster that will capture people's attention on the subway. I don't like it. Look, replied Lois, people are in a hurry in the subway. This poster will catch their attention quickly. I don't like it.

The bushy-eyebrowed matzo king just sat there with his arms crossed. I don't like it. The bushy-eyebrowed matzah king just sat there with his arms crossed. I don't like it, and I don't want to talk about it anymore. Neither do I, said Lois. Then he rolled up his poster, walked over to the window, opened it, and began to climb out onto the ledge high above the New York traffic. The matzah owner said, you going someplace? Lois said, yeah, climbed out onto the ledge, then screamed at the top of his lungs, you make the matzah, I'll make the ads. Stop, yelled the old man, we'll run it, we'll run it.

Lois climbed back in, said thank you, and calmly walked out of the office. Somewhere, Bill Golden was smiling. That year, DDB won four of the twelve gold trophies at the big advertising award show. Lois had done three of them. But after only one year at DDB, Lois and two other colleagues, an account guy named Fred Papert and writer Julian Koenig, decided to go out on their own. They felt there was room for one more hotshot creative agency on conservative Madison Avenue. The year was 1960. Papered Koenig Lois, or PKL as it became known, started to win business immediately. One of the first accounts was for the

Herald Tribune newspaper. Lois and Koenig produced TV commercials for the paper with a bold strategy. Four days a week, at one minute before the CBS 11 p.m. television news program, PKL ran a commercial that featured the newspaper's headline and a voiceover that said, There's more to the news than this headline, and there's more to it than you're going to hear on this program. Read the Herald Tribune. Amazingly, CBS ran that put-down night after night until CBS chairman William Paley saw the ad. He was furious and called PKL to get the ads off the air immediately.

Lois just smiled. By that time, the Herald Tribune's circulation had taken a big jump. Mission accomplished. In 1964, Robert Kennedy's organization asked PKL to create an advertising campaign for Kennedy's run for Senator of New York. At that time, Robert Kennedy was thought to be a carpetbagger, someone who was running in a state where he had no local connections. So Lois and Koenig developed the campaign theme line to counter that perception that said, let's put Robert Kennedy to work for New York. And Lois gave Kennedy one persuasive piece of advice. He told him to be photographed as much as possible

with his suit jacket off and his sleeves rolled up. Lois said rolled up sleeves were the symbol of a man hard at work. Look at almost any photo of Robert Kennedy from that period. His sleeves are rolled up in almost all of them. RFK won the election. When the Quaker Oats Company was looking for a new ad agency, they were impressed with PKL's work, except they had one problem. Quaker was based in Chicago, and PKL was in New York.

They wanted to hire Lois' agency, but decided to hire a local firm instead because they wanted the ability to call meetings at short notice. After hanging up the phone, Lois jumped in a taxi, got on a plane to Chicago, and raced over to Quaker's offices. When the Quaker clients returned from lunch, they couldn't believe Lois was sitting in their lobby.

Lois got the business. He knew you could impress clients with your work, but you can also impress them with your hustle and desire. One day, a new tech company called Halloyd Xerox knocked on Lois' door. The company made a new fangled machine called a photocopier. First order of business was the company's name.

Lois' agency recommended shortening it to Xerox. The Xerox 914 photocopier made duplicating simple and easy. Just put the original on the glass, press two buttons, and the copy would come out the other end. So Lois and company created a commercial where a businessman is sitting at his desk and hands a sheet of paper to his young daughter. Debbie, will you please go make a copy of this? Okay, Daddy. Little Debbie skips to the Xerox machine, puts the paper on the glass,

presses two buttons, the copy comes out the other end, then gives it to her father who asks, Which one is the original? Overnight, Xerox became famous. But the commercial generated complaints. Competitors said no photocopier could work that easy or that fast. They said the ad exaggerated the speed of the machine. The FCC got involved and told Xerox to pull the commercial

off the air. Lois then offered to produce a new commercial and invited the FCC to attend the actual filming. Lois had a plan. He wanted to film the exact same commercial again,

shot by shot, in front of the FCC, except this time they wouldn't cast a little girl. They would cast a chimpanzee. As the camera rolled, the FCC watched as a chimp grabbed the paper. Sam, will you please go make a copy of this? He then waddled over to the photocopier, pressed two buttons,

made a copy, and brought it back to the businessman in real time. You have just seen how easy it is to make copies with the Xerox 914 office copier. For a personal demonstration, simply call your nearest Xerox office. Now Lois had an even stronger commercial, proving the copier was so simple to use, even a monkey could do it. The country went ape for Xerox. By 1963, Lois' ad agency was a $20 million company, $200 million in today's dollars.

With that success, papered Koenig Lois became the first advertising agency to go public since 1929. At 31 years of age, George Lois was a millionaire. It wasn't just the stock market that was noticing Lois' bold work. One day, the editor of Esquire asked George to bring his bold design work to the covers of the magazine, and thus began a long relationship. Lois would go on to design 92 covers over the next 10 years. Every Esquire cover was audacious. As Lois said, he loved simple images with a shot of vinegar to burn the senses.

When the civil rights movement was gaining steam in 1963, Lois put boxer Sonny Liston on the cover, wearing a Santa hat. It shocked readers, and the magazine lost over $750,000 worth of advertising. But Esquire loved the cover. When the magazine asked if pop art was dead, Lois showed artist Andy Warhol drowning in a giant can of Campbell's tomato soup. And in maybe his most famous cover, when Muhammad Ali was stripped of his

heavyweight title for refusing induction into the army because of his religious views, Lois photographed Ali posing as the martyr Saint Sebastian with six bloody arrows sticking out of his body. The image stopped people in their

tracks because it tackled three issues at once, the Vietnam War, race, and religion. The New York Times called his covers, quote, an acid rain critique on society, race, politics, and war. Sales of the magazine increased 400%. 100%. Meanwhile, back on Madison Avenue, papered Koenig Lois was billing over $40 million by 1967, $330 million by today's dollars. But George Lois wasn't happy.

His agency was getting fat and comfortable. Instead of hitting home runs, the agency had started to bunt. George Lois was restless. Then stunned Madison Avenue by resigning from the ad agency he co-founded to start all over again. Two years later, his new agency, called Lois Holland Callaway, was billing $20 million. One of the biggest accounts Lois landed was Braniff Airlines. He came up with a great slogan, when you've got it, flaunt it. It was a fun, unexpected line, and it allowed Lois to flaunt every feature of the airline. Braniff International, when you've gotis to flaunt every feature of the airline.

Braniff International. When you've got it, flaunt it. That line became a national catchphrase. It was used in movies, comic routines, and in everyday life. I remember hearing, when you've got it, flaunt it, all the time back in the 70s, which was amazing because Braniff didn't fly to Canada. Yet George Lois' line had even reached my hometown of Sudbury, Ontario. In 1975, when Lois heard that boxer Ruben Hurricane Carter was in jail for a crime he didn't commit, he rallied behind Carter to get him freed.

When one of his biggest clients learned of it, he told Lois to drop his support of the black man or he would fire him. Lois absolutely refused. The five million dollar account walked out the door that day. Hard to believe, but in MTV's first year of operation, it was an abject failure. No one believed a 24-hour rock channel could ever work. Record companies had no interest in supplying free music videos. And more importantly, no cable operators were adding the channel to their schedule. So MTV asked Lois to create an advertising campaign aimed at cable companies.

But Lois decided the solution was to advertise not to cable operators, but straight to the kids. And he wanted to arm them with a line that would turn the fledgling channel around. With typical bravado, Lois managed to convince Mick Jagger to appear in his launch commercial for free. The clincher in each ad was a voiceover that said, If you don't get MTV where you live, call your cable operator and say I want my MTV.

Every time the ad aired, cable operators were flooded with calls from people saying I want my MTV. Within months, MTV was in 80% of households, record companies lined up to have their videos played, and advertisers considered MTV a must-buy. George Lois had done it again. He had helped usher in the cutting-edge era of music videos,

and he did it all at the cutting-edge age of 51. The legendary George Lois passed away in 2022. He was 91. I went to hear him speak once. I had only ever read about him, but I'd never heard him talk. I was amazed that he sounded like he was right out of The Sopranos, tough and profane and utterly inspiring. His message to us that day was this, if you're not willing to fight for your ideas, get the hell out of the business. He said you can't be cautious or you can be

creative, but you could never be a cautious creative. That's what I admired about Lois. He might have been too loud, he had a big ego, he sometimes took too much credit for his agency's work, but he never backed down from a fight in corporate boardrooms. He was willing to lose an account rather than compromise his

principles. He was willing to walk away from a $300 million company he co-founded in order to preserve his creative spark. Some would say he had too much acid in his battery. But I say this. I know what it takes to fight for good ideas every day. You come away with a lot of scar tissue.

But Lois was willing to grab Madison Avenue by the collar and shake it up for six astonishing decades. He created slogans that became part of the culture. 32 of his Esquire covers are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and he saved MTV from oblivion. At the end of the day, George Lois understood the one critical thing about creativity.

You'll never find big ideas in a safe place. You'll only find them out on the ledge when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terrestrial Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Jeff Devine. Under the influence theme by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre.

Music provided by APM Music. Follow me on social at Terry O'Influence. This is Season 12. If you're enjoying this episode, you might also like There's Something About Mary, Madwoman Mary Wells, Season 10, Episode 18.

She worked with George Lois. You'll find it in our archives wherever you listen to the show. And you can now find our podcasts on the Apostrophe YouTube channel. And if you think there are too many ads in a show about advertising, shame on you, you can listen ad-free

now on Amazon Music. See you next week. Fun fact. When Haloyd Xerox simplified its name to just Xerox, there was a worry the public would pronounce it X-rox, which was the name of a laxative at the time.