George Lois passed away yesterday. One of the all-time greats of the ad biz, he created truly memorable work at DDB in the late fifties before becoming one of the founders of Papert Koenig Lois in 1960. It became the first ad agency with an art director as a principal. It went public in 1962, raising its fortunes and starting a trend. By 1967 it was a major agency, with $40 million in billings and clients like Xerox, National Airlines and Procter & Gamble. I used to see George all the time as I worked in the Seagram building with the Four Seasons restaurant on the ground floor. He would take clients there for lunch, during the meal he would draw layouts on the uber expensive tablecloth. After the meal the maître de would fold up the cloth, put it in a tube and have it couriered to the PKL offices. Final words of wisdom from George when asked about the current state of the ad biz... He told the magazine Creative Review in 2012. “What happened finally, is these terrible conglomerate, no-talent, so-called marketing monoliths started to buy up agencies, and you have five or six or seven holding companies running the world, and if you’re part of them you’ll never be a creative agency. It just doesn’t work.”
Well said George.