Those of you who worked at Chiat/Day in the LA office during the 70s and 80s cannot ever forget Sharon Stanley, who was (how many hats did you wear, Sharon?) the office manager, personnel director, resident shrink, and earth mother who made a dysfunctional company function. (She's one of the sweetest people I've ever met, and she had the brilliant sense to hire ME!) Here are some snapshots from the recent wedding of her daughter, Dillon.
Meet our nation's newest threat: outdoor advertising terrorists.
2,500 Projects in Two Months! A profile of the lift-off of Song, Delta Airline's attempt to shed excess baggage.
Those who ignore advertising are doomed to repeat it. The Ad*Access Project is a searchable database of 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955.
The CEO of what may be the world's oldest company grants the first interview ever given to the foreign media in 1400 years. When this company talks about surviving tough times, it isn't talking about the NASDAQ bubble, it's talking about the feudal wars.
Bill and Britney go mano a mano in this interactive quiz designed to answer the eternal question: just what IS art?
This website is s-o-o deck.
McDonald's will shift more of its $716 million ad budget from TV to the Internet. "Males ages 18 to 24 are a critical market to us," says Neil Perry, the fast-food outfit's director of digital marketing. "They're spending as much if not more time on the Internet than watching TV."
Gifts to museums and other nonprofit arts organizations are expected to fall to $8 billion this year, down from $12 billion in 2002. That's a decline of 1/3.
The death of Enron has started generating books on its demise. One of them poses an interesting question: could Enron have survived if Pres. Bush had not withdrawn from the Kyoto treaty?
Ever looked at that big red "9" outside 9 West 57th Street and wonder, "Where'd they make that?" Ever look at a sculpture by Claes Oldenberg, Jeff Koons, Richard Serra, or Matthew Barney and wonder, "Where'd they make that? Step into this dark, back street in Brooklyn ....
Just four short years ago, money flowed like water and ideas were
plentiful in the Internet world. The notion of retaining an in-house
Zen abbot for e-commerce didn't warrant a second thought -- instead
it was embraced. As Casey Dunn, the former CTO of failed online
clothier Zoza.com says, "It was in the water." The former dot-com
executive developed this site to chronicle the birth of the online
store backed by the founders of Banana Republic. While some of the
technical details in this exhumation may seem dry, there's plenty
of interesting behind-the-scenes commentary. It's all here -- quirky
item pages resurrected and critiqued, an examination of unsuccessful
marketing efforts, and the failure to standardize sizing, which
led to return rates of 80%. While today's armchair analysts are
having a field day with the bursting of the bubble economy, sites
such as this one provide a fitting (and interesting) epitaph to
the demise of many a dot-com.
Kate Bingaman is a second year grad student in design at the University of Nebraska. She is on a mission to track and photograph everything she buys during grad school. Kate's look at her consumption habits begs several interesting questions: Are we what we buy? Are we defined by our choice of brands, movies, books, and foods? Why do we buy what we do? What is the history behind each object purchased?
... but there is a phone. The Samsung SPH-n270 is an exact replica of the phone used in the movie "Matrix Reloaded."
A new online mentoring program pairs business experts with budding entrepreneurs.
Hewlett-Packard is developing a semi-robotic device that lets your "virtual presence" at a meeting feel more life-like. Focus groups report they like the one without arms.
The "corporate accountability movement" is gaining strength as activists push some of the nation's largest companies to implement social change.
The Dia:Beacon (site of this year's jayday event) isn't the only contemporary art museum in the Hudson Valley. There's also the mammoth Storm King Arts Center, a 500-acre outdoor sculpture park.
Read (NY Times; free registration required)
With the increasing popularity (and computing muscle) of PDAs (like Palms and PocketPCs), the search goes on for methods of entering text without attaching a keyboard. This device gets the jayday.org "Weirdest Device of the Year" award.
Jay was never more Jay-like than when it came to pitching new business. He was a perfectionist, and many a pitch was rewritten the night before to meet his demanding expectations. And nothing made him more frantic than to see something misspelled.
Forbes.com reports on the recent 100-agency fist-fight that broke out to win the $15 million Virgin Atlantic Airways account. One of the agencies might have been eliminated, suggests Forbes, because a follow-up thank-you referred to Virgin Atlantic "Airlines" instead of "Airways." Which agency was it? You’ll have to read the article to find out.
"All you, all the time. You give us 24 hours, we'll give you you." Researchers are working on an always-on wearable camera that takes pictures automatically as you go about your day, storing them for later perusal and editing.
The world is a mess. Nothing seems certain, everyone's seeking comfort; so how can design make us all feel better? Welcome to the new world of "Darwinian aesthetics."
Being a judge at Wharton's Business Plan Competition offers a peek at tomorrow's startup ideas.
As the Walt Disney Concert preps for its October opening, the architect Frank Gehry discusses his career and admits to a weakness for ....Korean karaoke bars?
Jay would have loved this. This company offers Postal Service Mail In Your Email In-Box. How do they do it? You have all your mail sent to this company. They will open your mail, scan it, and email it to you.
InfoWorld’s list of disruptive technologies for 2003 included open source, self-service customer-relationship management, digital identity, and my personal favorite, weblogs, a sample of which you are reading at this exact minute.
In our new feature - "Where Are They Now?" - we profile former Chiat/Dayers who have taken on some new challenge, sans advertising. Our guest today is Robin Castillo, former head of traffic at C/D New York, who writes ...
"I'm currently living in Buenos Aires with Orlando [Robin’s husand] and my poodle and having a ball being an ex-patriot and speaking Castellano. We're investigating potential businesses that we may get involved in, foremost of which is exporting of antiques with a couple of friends of ours. Also looking into other things, like possibly setting up a foundation to create items made from llama and creating a better work environment and pay scale for the workers while at the same time doing something more creative. Not sure yet whether we will stay here or not but with the dollar valued at 3x the peso it's a good place to be right now and we have an apartment that was left to us by Orlando's mother.”
A review of two new books about the most mysterious species on the planet: "Why Are They So Weird? What's Really Going On In A Teenager's Brain" and "Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers."
An essay on the philolosphy of food by Roger Scruton, author of A Short History of Modern Philosophy. The change from hard-won to take-away diet (from game to play) has changed the spiritual as well as the social complexion of humanity.
Ever wonder would it would have been like if Abraham Lincoln had used Powerpoint at Gettysburg?
This apartment in the NYT Magazine is the virtual apartment. Take a look.
Since Jay died I have been having this irresistible urge to look at art (mostly free) and learn about art (mostly free, sometimes comes with wine at openings) and buy art (oops! -- not free) In the spirit of jay/day, I've been concentrating on young artists (30ish).
I've become very interested in a group of young artists in Berlin, all of whom studied together in Leipzig. You can check them out at http://www.liga-galerie.de/index.html-- LIGA gallery is a coop set up in Berlin by the artists, who hired a director to promote them outside Germany. (They are already represented by a gallery in Leipzig.) A few of them have begun to be shown in the US, most recently Tom Fabritius at Sandroni.Rey in LA. Some of the others will be shown there in the next year.
I visited the gallery in Berlin a couple weeks ago, and went to a museum where some of them are showing in Leipzig. Leipzig, as you may know (but I did not) was the seat of the begininng of the resistance to the GDR, and where the riots began which led to the downfall of the GDR and the reunification of Germany. It has a rich art history and a top art school. Before reunification, selling art commercially was forbidden in the GDR, so people taught art and made art, but couldn't sell it. Today a lot of the people who were painting in those years are teachers at the school there, but were never able to build their own careers. Instead they are helping to nurture these younger artists.
One person from the GDR who earned his living as an artist's model was a man named Gerd Lybke. Once the wall came down, he opened a gallery in Berlin showing his friends, one of whom was Neo Rauch. His gallery's website is http://www.eigen-art.com/
So why was I in Berlin?
Robert Wilson (Einstein at the Beach) and his foundation (http://www.robertwilson.com) sponsored a small group (15 people) trip to Berlin for a long weekend to look at art and architecture there, and to see a number of Robert Wilson's projects. We attended a performance of his new opera Leonce and Lena (it was fantastic, got great reviews and I didn't understand a word, or even know the story in advance) and his exhibition opening at Galerie Nordenhake (an installation, some chair sculpture and some drawings.) In addition, we visited the Armani Guggenheim Berlin exhibit which he directed, which was still being installed. Beyond all the Robert Wilson activities, we also had a private, behind-the-scenes tour of the Reichstags, a private tour of the Jewish Museum (which was designed by Daniel Leibeskind and is not a Holocaust museum, but a museum about the whole history of Germany's Jews) and a guided architectural tour by boat of Berlin along the canals (did you know that Berlin has more canals than Venice?) We also attended a luncheon at the Brazilian embassy in Robert Wilson's honor, which while hosted by lovely people, was not an experience I would need to repeat.
I did meet a really wonderful couple from Sweden who run the Wanas foundation there - it's worth looking into: http://www.wanas.se . Here's an excerpt from their website:
"The Wanås foundation is a nonprofit foundation, located in the south of Sweden, founded in 1994. The site is located on a medieval estate, includes a castle, a barn, a stable and a sculpture park. The purpose of the foundation is to encourage contemporary art by organizing exhibitions at Wanås. The foundation receives grants from the Swedish state, the region, other foundations as well from private sponsers.
Since 1987 The Park has housed a growing permanent collection by international artists. The Barn and the Stable is used for rotating exhibitions.
The first exhibition, under auspices of the foundation, took place in 1996 when eight American artists participated. The following years exhibition, 1998-2000, have 9-10 international artists made site specific projects. The focus is on sculpture and site specific installations. All the projects are new work made by the artists for Wanås."
Next summer they will have an installation by Maya Lin.
There is another trip with Robert Wilson to London in November around the opening of his production of Aida - think Cirque de Soleil and Verdi without the elephants ;)
Although I have been to Germany quite a few times in recent years on business, having lost relatives in the Warsaw ghetto among other places, I am always a little uncomfortable when I go there. I think that's ok. I feel good being alive and able to go there and walk freely and thumb my nose at Hitler!
If you haven't been, I recommend Berlin heartily - it's a city buzzing with new life - art, architecture and other forms of culture.
I'll miss the visit to Dia:Beacon because on my continuing contemporary art educational tour, I'm going to Art:Basel for the first time.
Susan Goodman has provided a copy of the speech Jane Newman gave at Jay's New York memorial:
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New York, May 29, 2002
We have come here today to reconnect and pay tribute to Jay Chiat who died on the 23rd April 2002.
When we were at 79 Fifth Jay once wrote in one of his wills that when he died he wanted nothing maudlin or sentimental just a party to celebrate his life. I think he would be very pleased with this.
Although no one person here will know everyone in the room (except possibly Adelaide) we all have at least two things in common. First, we all worked at the New York office of Chiat/Day at some point between 1981 and 1995.
Second, I think everyone here will agree that their life would not be as good as it is, if it hadn’t had Jay Chiat in it.
I am not going to review all Jay’s many accomplishments in advertising today --all his innovations and his awards. They have been well covered in articles in the press and I am sure we have all read several of them.
And we haven’t come here today just to celebrate that. Of course it is true that the legacy Jay, the icon, left the advertising world in general is amazing. But the legacy Jay, the man, left us personally is priceless.
And it is this legacy, the precious time we danced with him to his tune—the exhilarating dance of creative excellence—that we have come to celebrate tonight.
To be at Chiat Day in the 80s and 90s was to have membership in a club. A club where all the cards were stamped by Jay. It never existed before Jay and it will never exist again.
Everyone else in the industry observed his accomplishments from afar. For us in this room he was our coworker. At different times he was creative director, president, chairman of the New York office. And he could also fill in as office cleaner, receptionist, media planner, account executive. Jay stories are legendary in the business but if you worked in NY I am sure you have your own personal one.
My particular favorite was in the mid 80s when the agency had shot a TV commercial that turned out to be a dog. Jay’s response was “well we must bite the bullet”—meaning reshoot it. When Wolf told him how much it cost he quickly responded “maybe we should suck the bullet.”
For me it captures in a nutshell Jays unique and contradictory nature. In this case highly principled but also a practical realist ...... as well as his razor sharp wit.
In fact Jay was totally unique. All aspects of him were unique. I don’t think it is possible to ever describe him adequately. And he was full of contradictions. His impatience and short attention span were matched by incredible determination and dedication. His cranky acerbic wit came with a huge heart.
As someone said on the web site when you were called into his office you never knew if he was going to praise you or predigest you. And as we all know, having Jay in a meeting with you was sometimes a very mixed blessing. He wanted you off balance.
Jay once said: “when you accept the fact that you are never satisfied no matter what you do or what you achieve—once you make peace with that, then you are free to move on.” I think that explains a lot about him.
He loved change. I can’t imagine ever meeting anyone who would welcome change as much as Jay did. The fact he was never satisfied left him in perpetual motion. He had no interest in what was or what had been he was only interested in what could be. In this he was the very essence of creativity—always searching for the new, the innovative, the never-been-done-before.
In his vision of the way things should and could be he was a perfectionist. He wanted to create “new” better. His own personal credo was “good enough is not enough” and he donated it to the agency. He set the bar for new and better and when he got there—or we got there—he raised it again ... and again and again.
Jay had two criteria for who came to his dance. First you had to be smart and second you had to have passion. This was true of every department and every level.
I tracked down what he used to say at each new employee breakfast (after he had complained about people being late!)
It went:“We want you to love what you do. If you don’t love it and you are not passionate about it you probably should be doing something else. We want you to be passionate—very, very passionate, because that’s the only way we can do what we want to do which is to be the best agency there is.”
Jay not only inspired he also encouraged us. En—courage in the true sense of the word—fill with courage. When you were with him anything was possible. He gave us an open brief and asked us to do our best work. We did things that had never been done before and we found out there was nothing that we couldn’t figure out. He extracted from us far more than we could ever achieve on our own. Jay never baby sat anyone but he mentored everyone. All of us here today.
And as Jay danced the dance of creative excellence we were all his dance partners. We whirled and twirled around dancing better and faster than we had ever danced before.
Jay was also generous. He was generous with his art, with his ideas and he was generous to us all personally.
What other boss has chosen a Valentines gift for you every year and sent you fresh flowers on your anniversary? In good years he gave all the profit away in big bonuses. The agency had by far the widest stock distribution of any agency with living names on the door.
Jay lived large and lived young. Even at 70 he was still the youngest person in a room of 30 year olds.
He was compelling, irascible, unpredictable.
He could drive you nuts but there was nothing like being with him.
Nothing was ever ordinary when he was around.
I miss him, every aspect of him.
I miss his humor.
I miss his help.
I miss his hand written notes with “love Jay” on the bottom – he meant it – he loved us all.
Most of all though I will miss the dancing.
And whether you think you did your best work at Chiat Day or after you left I think you will agree we have all danced better for knowing Jay Chiat.
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(Note: This speech uses a lot of material from a speech Kupe gave about Jay and it borrows extensively from comments on the web site and elsewhere.)
Welcome to the launch of the jay/day blog!
Today is also the opening of one of the many benefactors of Jay's patronage - Dia:Beacon, the largest museum of contemporary art in the world. Here is a beautiful aerial photo of the museum, which shows its proximity to the Hudson River and the Metro North train station.
You may be reading this website right now, thinking "Gee, this is kind of cool! I would love to start my own blog. After all, I'm an intelligent human being and I have all kinds of things to say that the people in my real life won't listen to anymore. But I'm sure the masses who troll the web would be FASCINATED by my unique perspective. How do I do set one up?"
Well, this website was built using software from a cool company called MovableType. But if you're not a geek, it's tricky to setup and manage. But they're coming out with a really simple version called "Typepad." It's not released yet, but you can sign up here and they will let you know when it's available.
"If a company can show it has email policies in place that effectively delete all email after, say, 30 days, that will dramatically reduce the amount of data available for discovery and, hence, the discovery cost."
This is a company I've been following for awhile. There is something about a company that makes a profit by deleting e-mails, and thus destroying evidence that I find creepy in these Enron Days.
read.
Is this a tree falling in the forrest kind of thing?
Would someone please invent the same thing for other sins...I'm sure there is money in it!
Disapearing Ink has recently changed its name to something a little too much like omnivore
My favorite book these days is The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea. There are many books out there about various companies (Apple, IBM, Ford, etc.) but no one to my knowledge has pulled back and looked at the history of companies in general. It's a short read (a quality I appreciate more and more as I reach my matron station in life) and was written by two senior editors at the Economist.
A new bill making its way through the New York State legislature would create "culture zones," with incentives for property improvements, low rent for artists, and tax credits for philanthrophic gifts to qualifying projects within the zone.
We've all Googled. And everybody knows Google is just about the only "dot.com" survivor to make it off the iLand. But this article provides some interesting details on the economics of their business, the threats to their future, and how one hotel manager Googles her guests.
Ok, I'll admit it. During the days of the virtual office, I spent many a morning at the gym. But I was THINKING about work, so that counts, doesn't it? Here's an article from the Wall Street Journal on some clever high-tech ways to make people think you're actually in your office.
(Requires subscripton to the online WSJ
New Museum of Contemporary Art is going to build in the Bowery. By choosing a young, up and coming architect we should expect something exciting.
It's spring, when a gals' fancy turns to reading great commencement addresses.
"Hope isn't a choice, it's a moral obligation, a human obligation, an obligation to the cells in your body."
Tony Kushner - Vasser 2002
for the whole address:
Euro Space? Nano Space? Space Space? Relationship Space? Dump Space?
Wired Magazine, in partnership with Rem Koolhaas, asked 30 architects to consider Spaces for the 21st Century. See what they've come up with.
Mentors have played a powerful role in the lives of most successful people. General Colin Powell points to the influence of his father; and Senator John McCain credits a high school teacher and coach whose example helped strengthen his resolve during years of imprisonment in North Vietnam. Other participants in mentoring programs include Tom Brokaw, Deepak Chopra, Walter Cronkite, Edward James Olmos, Tim Russert, and Mike Wallace.
Be a mentor -- and change a child's life for the good. The National Mentoring Partnership website lets you enter your zip code and will show you a list of mentoring organizations in your area.
A mixture of art and architecture in the continuing drama at the Whitney. The Board said no to the Rem Koolhaus addition and then said goodbye to Max Anderson.
I've never had a chance to use a tablet PC, but a friend of mine who is the head of technology at Capitol One, says that his employees who participated in a beta program refused to give them back. Here's an article that talks about a prototype of a double-jointed portable computer.
Every summer, the Lincoln Center Festival brings some of the most exciting avant-garde dance, music, theatre and performance art to New York City. (I once ran into ex-C/D-er Bob Perkins at a Laurie Anderson concert.)
Some of the highlights of this year's festivals? Deborah Warner's The Angel Project ... Korea's Pansori and Daedong Gut (shaman ritual) ... Chen Shi-Zheng's The Orphan of Zhao ... Heiner Goebbel's Eislermaterial ... Prokofiev Marathon ... Salvatore Sciarrino's Macbeth ... Festival of Brazilian Music ... New York Video Festival, and more!
Challenge yourself by seeing at least one event you'd never thought you'd catch yourself at in a hundred years!
When Katie Couric televised her colonoscopy, thousands of people bravely called their GI and discovered that Golytely is not a character in "Breakfast at Tiffanys." Starting tonight, Katie launches a new effort to urge people to find growth, but this time it's not in your colon, it's in your career.
I've bought three different cellphones and each time, at the end of the year contract, I cancelled the service. People kept CALLING me on it. It was very irritating. A new study says that mobile phones have enslaved us. We are emotionally dependent on them for our identity and feelings of self-worth and incapable even of going to the shops without whipping them out at regular intervals to call family and friends for advice.
Rosanne McNulty (now Roseanne Santamaria) and her husband Andrew gave birth to David Joseph on 4:11 pm on Dec. 12, 2002. According to Dad, "He is 9l bs 5 1/2 oz, and 20 1/4” tall. He has a big head and big feet too." It's May, Rosie, when do we get to see pictures?
And Jim Reedy and his wife Astrid proudly show off 20-minute old Marley Eliza Reedy
Jayday.org's first shameless plug:
Andy Law ran the Chiat/Day office in London. In the early 90s, he and his partner David Abraham split off to form St. Luke's, one of the most radically organized ad agencies in the world. (Stevan Alburty wrote a full-length feature story about all this in Fast Company.) Andy has written a book about St. Luke's and the future of creative cooperatives in a book called "Creative Company" which is now available in America on Amazon.com.
David Abraham left the company in 2001 to run Discovery Network Europe. Andy has just left as well, after what the Guardian calls "a dispute over strategy developed into a bitter boardroom battle."
I spoke with Andy two weeks ago and he is his usually ebulliant self, excited about doing something even more teeth-rattling in the future.
(I have a rare video of a UK Channel Four documentary about St. Luke's that is an absolute howl. No, you may not borrow it, but you're welcome to come over and watch it. Bring the popcorn.)
Resumes and monsters.com is S-O-O nineties. If you're trolling for some smart MBA graduates, those who blog their way through school are just the agressive entrepreneurs you've been looking for. On the other hand, maybe they'll spend WAY too much time at work updating their blogs.
Just in time for the new upfront, it appears that advertisers are losing interest in reality television. Will Joe Millionaire scream frantically to Paula, "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here!" (Wait a minute. I think I'm getting my plot lines mixed up.
The construction crane may be the U.K.'s national bird, for dozens of them are reshaping the London skyline. London is , in fact, contemplating building Europe's tallest building. It's designed by Renzo Piano.