Supposedly, Jay Chiat once said that the ultimate mission for his agency, Chiat/Day, was “to see how big it could get before it got bad.” Not sure if he ever announced the achievement of this goal prior to selling the place to Omnicom, which merged it with TBWA, and shrugging off these mortal coils a few years ago, but the place remains as erratic as ever.
I cite it in the book as the quintessential example of how truly difficult it is to tell the difference between extraordinary advertising and ordinary (or even worse) advertising, insofar as it was Chiat/Day that gave us “1984″ one year and “Lemmings” the year following. About as good an example of the former and the latter as one could ever hope to see. And this year, the agency is at it again. With a campaign for Visa whose theme line: “Life takes Visa” was pronounced by no less a luminary than Lee Clow as a “good one.”
Clearly, 20 years of additional experience have not improved his ability to differentiate between the “Lemmings” and “1984″s of the world because “Life takes Visa” is hardly a good line. “Life takes…” a lot of the other things the advertising calls attention to: “guts”, “bravery”, etc. But life is pretty damn comfortable taking MasterCard, American Express, any number of debit cards or cold hard cash. Something any idiot should know, especially the ones burning through $100MM on the Olympics trying to offload this tripe on us.
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