TBWA Chiat/Day
Advertising Agency
1968
It’s mid-January 1983, and executives with Apple Computer tell Chiat/Day Advertising in Los Angeles that the groundbreaking commercial Chiat/Day has created to introduce the new Macintosh computer during the Super Bowl is just too risky.
The agency is instructed to sell the time slot.
Except there are no takers. Finally, the deadline arrives two days before the Super Bowl. The computer maker is forced to go ahead and run the commercial.
Two days later, Chiat/Day becomes one of the most famous advertising agencies in America, the Macintosh helps spearhead the computer age, and one of the most mesmerizing commercials of all time makes advertising history.
The “1984” commercial, portraying a grim Orwellian world that is smashed to pieces when a woman throws a sledgehammer through Big Brother’s image on a giant video screen, has been called one of the most powerful pieces of advertising ever created. But it was just one in a series of groundbreaking ideas that resulted in an enduring reputation for Chiat/Day as the agency that changed all the rules.
Before Chiat/Day, there was no real advertising industry in Los Angeles. In fact, there was little or no national advertising created anywhere else but New York or Chicago. In other cities, ad agencies did small local campaigns for small local clients. Chiat/Day changed the mindset of corporate marketers and paved the way for other agencies to set up shop in Portland, San Francisco and Minneapolis.
Chiat/Day started out in 1968 when Tom Faust left his partner Guy Day, prompting the latter to call Jay Chiat and suggest a merger. Faust/Day and Jay Chiat & Associates became Chiat/Day.
From the beginning, the agency did things differently. Chiat and Day flipped a coin to see who would be the president of the agency. Day won. One of their first account pitches was for Equitable Savings Bank, a big TV advertiser. But the agency had never done a television commercial before, so the partners rented a videotape camera and placed it in a corner of the conference room to make it look as though it were a standard piece of office equipment. The agency won the account (and promptly returned the camera).
Over the years, Chiat/Day has represented many of L.A.’s biggest advertisers, and quite a few outside Southern California. In 1970 the agency introduced Honda’s first car to the United States, only to lose the account four years later when Honda outgrew the then-small regional agency.
Remember the Artesians? The mythical creatures that put the taste in Olympia beer became a cultural icon, one of dozens the agency would produce, including the Energizer bunny a decade later and, a decade after that, the Taco Bell Chihuahua.
Day left in 1974 after the agency lost the Honda account, returned in 1982, and left again in 1986.
Despite its memorable work, Chiat/Day was in trouble by the early ’90s. The agency had developed a reputation for “churn and burn” for every win there was a big client heading for the door. When Chiat finally opted to sell to advertising giant TBWA in 1996, the agency was loaded down by debt.
Three strong years later, TBWA Chiat/Day is by far the biggest ad agency in Los Angeles, and while not all its attention-grabbing campaigns have been a success its “Enjoy the Ride” commercials did nothing to sell Nissans and was scrapped when it comes to creating ads that flip conventional thinking on its ear, TBWA Chiat/Day is still among the best in the business.
Dan Turner
