Tuesday February 28, 2006

Lois and Snark

Last week, I wrote an article for Advertising Age about the use of celebrities in advertising. For a sidebar, I spoke to George Lois, the iron horse creative director who has worked with so many celebrities—on everything from ad campaigns to classic Esquire covers—that he’s published a whole book about his exploits. Here’s his advice (or non-advice) for dancing with the stars:

I can’t give advice to people on how to do celebrity advertising other than that you can’t do testimonial-type advertising where you make the guy look like a fool and look like he or she is doing it for money. You’ve got to do it so they’re enjoying themselves. There’s no one way to do it. In most cases, it’s witty, it’s fun, and the advertising always makes the man or woman look good. You look at them and you like them for it.

Celebrities now—there’s nobody coming to them with ideas where they look at it and they say, “Wow, I’ve got to do that commercial.” They’re only doing it for the big bucks, and when they do it for the big bucks, it usually comes out pretty shitty.

Posted by jim at 02:19 PM ||