Lee Clow Will Tell You: Self-Promotion Sure Pays

Perhaps Lee Clow’s most successful advertising campaign is the one he worked up to promote . . . himself.

Clow, 41-year-old executive vice president for the Los Angeles-based advertising agency Chiat/Day Inc., has helped elevate that firm to national prominence by developing some of the most alluring and unorthodox advertising in recent memory for Apple Computer Inc., Nike Inc. and Olympia Brewing Co.

A Los Angeles native, Clow joined Chiat/Day 12 years ago after working at N. W. Ayer advertising agency in Los Angeles. But it took some doing before the agency welcomed him aboard.

The bearded Clow tried for a year to persuade Chiat/Day to hire him. He launched a relentless campaign on the theme “Hire the Hairy” and sent buttons, T-shirts, bumper stickers and even a jack-in-the-box from which a hairy little figure popped out.

Finally, he offered to work without pay for three months if Chiat/Day would hire him for a year. The agency gave in.

Since then, he has gone on to oversee some of the most widely celebrated advertising campaigns created recently. Those include the 60-second “1984” television commercial for Apple’s Macintosh computers and the startling billboard and print ads for Nike shoes that feature athletes such as Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis.

Clow has also been named Leader of the Year by the Western States Advertising Assn., a Los Angeles-based trade group. He is the youngest person ever to receive the award and also the first recipient who is not a founder or principal of an ad agency. (His boss, Jay Chiat, was the first recipient back in 1977). Clow will receive the award Feb. 6 at the Beverly Wilshire hotel.