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Today news came that Lee Clow, the Chief Creative Officer at Apple’s ad agency TBWA, BFF of Steve Jobs, and “advertising’s art-director guru,” has decided to step down from his post. (Before you pigeonhole him, Clow’s also the man responsible for the Energizer Bunny and the Taco Bell Chihuahua.) Duncan Milner — executive creative director on the Apple account — will take his place. After the jump, we look back at Clow’s legacy by rounding up ten of our favorite Apple campaigns.
Update: Actually, he’s not going anywhere. And he’d like us silly bloggers to stop talking about it. Fair enough. The man deserves a tribute regardless.
1. “1984″ Considered by many to be the best commercial OF ALL TIME, it was directed by Ridley Scott.
2. “Switch” A real student, Ellen Feiss, explains that the PC ate her homework.
3. “Get a Mac” The first! Justin Long owes Mr. Clow a favor.
4. Apple iPod Touch Grid Genius format: combine unknown musician Brenden Benson with all of the new applications the iPod Touch could handle.
5. Apple Gamma iPod + iTunes from 2008 One of his most famous commercials, it captures the style and energy that the brand is now associated with.
6. “Treetrimming” (Get a Mac) Continues the hilarious Mac vs. PC commercials, but in claymation.
7. “Hal 2000″ Superbowl Ad This hilarious ad touts the Mac’s immunity to the Y2K bug.
8. Playing Apple iTunes: Coldplay Sonic Same format as the commercial with Brenden Benson, but with Coldplay. Interactive graphics emanating from the instruments lend it an explosion of color.
9. 3 Steps There’s no step three! Ha.
10. “Think Different” We love how he segues from Martin Luther King Jr. to Richard Branson.
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8 Responses
[...] Lee Clow steps down as COO at TBWA on 30 October 2009, and Flavorwire put together a tribute. [...]
[...] Lee Clow Tribute: Top 10 Apple Commercials [...]
nice, but it would have been interesting to know what year each one ran…
Nice blog with great post’s and thanks for this !
Y8
Looks like he is not going anywhere. http://gizmodo.com/5394060/apple-ad-god-lee-clow-im-not-going-anywhere
[...] No App For That: Flavorwire pays tribute to the ad man Lee Clow, who oversaw many of Apple’s most memorable television commercials, [...]
I worked with Lee Clow for almost twenty years and this is a fairly incomplete list of his achievements. He worked on hundreds of accounts other than Apple, yet you focus on that one piece of business. He’s one of the creative giants in the industry. I sent this link to him. How disappointed he would be to see that this is all someone used to summarize his career.
Steve, I totally agree with you. The Apple work is wonderful and ground breaking just like all of his other work. I think the comment was posted by someone who didn’t know and hadn’t worked with Lee. My personal favorites would include some of the house ads and his Hire The Hairy campaign to convince Hy to hire him. His work goes much further than any single campaign.