Exceprted from the full feature in Volume 20, Number 4

“Here by the sea and sand, nothing ever goes as planned.” – Pete Townshend

Four miles inland from Venice Beach—in the middle of the ongoing commercial transformation of what used to be the Ballona Creek wetlands—sits a massive, gray whale-like structure amongst other bastions of California industry. A large yellow gatehouse greets the visitor, next to a flagpole flying a giant pirate skull and crossbones. The building, dubbed “Advertising City,” is home to TBWA/Chiat/Day, the world’s sixth largest ad agency and the heart and soul of the TBWA Worldwide network, a global conglomerate overseeing 12,000 employees at nearly 260 ad agencies in 77 countries around the world. 

“Chiat,” (pronounced “shy-at”) looks like a post-modern LA iteration of the Wonka Factory. Down a long ramping tunnel, the massive complex opens up to reveal a giant hive of buzzing creative activity. At center is the brain trust: yellow “cave dwellings” three stories high, where the creative teams of copywriters & art directors work. Beyond here lies Central Park, a spacious atrium bathed in natural light with dirt floors and real trees often used for meetings and lunchtime decompression. Then there’s the indoor basketball court ready for spontaneous pick-up games. Chiat’s a dog friendly workspace (Pedigree is one of the agency’s marquee clients), with a dog park where you can play fetch while waiting for 11th hour inspiration to hit. The whole thing is something you have to see to believe, and that’s the trick—to inspire awe and envy in its visitors and clients.

The longstanding mission statement here is “Good Enough Is Not Enough.” That credo of obsessive perfectionism infuses the outwardly laidback ambience of Chiat, because it’s sink or swim in a company that has chopped up and spit out more than its share of 20-somethings toiling for top-tier clients like Apple, Pepsi, Gatorade and Nissan. But if you’re keen on working in LA’s Mecca of creativity and design in media arts, (with budgets to match the ideas) then Chiat/Day hovers near the top of the shortlist. 

At the center of it all is Lee Clow…a salty 67 year-old lifelong surfer in shorts, sandals and Yater surf tee, conducting this crazy orchestra. Surfing is everything to Lee, and in turn he’s made it everything to this, his place. It defines the culture, the spirit of the work, and it has defined Lee and his special brand of creative thought since he came to work here in 1973. 

Hardly anyone outside of advertising knows who Lee Clow is. But Lee is to advertising as Magic Johnson was to pro-basketball. He’s the guy who modernized the game, made it hip and subversive while elevating it to pop culture worthiness. He’s a godfather to the creative side of the industry who still comes to work on a regular basis to bust everybody’s balls and raise a little hell, all to make the work better. Lee’s also universally respected by his peers. Dan Weiden, founding partner of Portland’s Weiden & Kennedy—the legendary agency who coined “Just Do It” for Nike—said “Lee Clow’s heart has been pumping this sorry industry full of inspiration for longer than most of its practitioners have been alive. He is a giant. He is the real thing. He is indefatigable. I hate him.” 

“Never start a conversation with a yawn” - Lee Clow’s Beard Twitter Page, January 5, 2011.

Born in Los Angeles in 1943, Lee Clow grew up at the beach. He first picked up a board at age 12, a gift from a cousin on the Santa Monica College swim team. “She’d take me down to the beach and the first wave I caught was on her board, a big red funny-looking thing.” While learning to surf Santa Monica’s surrounding beachbreaks in the late 1950’s, the teenage Clow would often stash his boards in the garage of a lifeguard friend between sessions.  

An adopted child, there was something about surfing that resonated early on: “There’s an independence to surfing, it’s just you and the ocean. There aren’t a bunch of rules,” Lee says. “I remember as surfers...we were very much the non-conformists, where all the cool guys were jocks on the football team. After awhile you realize it’s more fun to be the non-conformist.” 

By age 16 Clow was leading surf missions to spots like Palos Verdes Cove, Manhattan Beach Pier and El Porto, before gradually making his way up north to surf Topanga, Malibu Surfrider and Rincon. Malibu in particular became a home away from home. Lee would often crash in his VW bus in the Surfrider lot so he could be first up for dawn patrol. “Once Lance Carson rolled in at three in the morning, and smashed into the back of my car,” he chuckles.  “But Lance Carson was, you know, Lance Carson. So the next day I’m telling everyone ‘Oh yea, Lance Carson crashed into the back of my car.” 

Growing up sunburnt and surf-stoked at the beach, Lee knew he’d found a lasting lifestyle. “I wasn’t looking for a sport so much as I was looking more for the way I wanted to be, the way I wanted to live.  Surfing formed my creative personality and independent thinking.”

Early on Lee sensed he had artistic potential, though it was his first-grade teacher that first noticed it during a drawing exercise. “I painted a boat and made the smoke go the right way out of the chimney, so I always had it in the back of my mind that somehow my art was going to be my way of making a living.” 

Following high school. Clow enrolled at Santa Monica College to be close to the ocean and maintain his student deferment. By the mid-60’s the Vietnam War was fast ramping up and Lee, by then in his early 20s, was ripe for the draft. Lee’s art classes intrigued him, yet his other courses suffered if the weather and surf were any good. Clow’s course load dwindled and soon after he received his Army induction notice. ““I never aspired to be at the top of the dean’s list,” Lee recalls dryly. “I screwed up.”

Clow was hustled off to basic training in Fort Bliss, Texas, where he seemed destined for frontline cannon fodder. But a funny thing happened on the way to fighting in the shit—the army listed him as an “Illustrator/Draftsman” after reviewing his education background, ironically enough. Instead of Vietnam, Lee was sent to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico to do chart-work, illustrations and graphics. Clow’s tan and surfer physique, however, set him apart from his fellow recruits. “When I showed up from California, they asked me if I had my lifesaving credentials and I did…Red Cross approved. So they sent me out to run the NCO pool for the next two summers.” 

Guarding a chlorinated pool part-time in the middle of the desert gave Lee a severe case of ocean-separation anxiety. Talking about those years living inland gets Clow especially animated--“I can’t understand how people live out there…all those people that can live in the middle of the continent. It mystifies me how they can not be close to water.”

“Advertising is the wrong industry for people who don’t want to make waves. Especially on the client side.” -Lee Clow’s Beard Twitter Page, June 9, 2010.

Discharged at the end of 1966, Lee enrolled at Long Beach State College. He had recently fallen for Ilene Rosenberg, a pretty, single mom with two kids. With his GI bill support running out, Clow knew he had to find a means to support his budding family. At Long Beach State Lee discovered ad school, opening up new creative possibilities. Advertising, “was the most interesting direction because it was about ideas,” says Lee. “Art and copy had finally come together in the sixties. For the first time being an ‘Art Director’ was an idea job, not just an art job, and that excited me.” 

Lee debuted as an Art Director with the agency NW Ayer in 1968.  Advertising was a different animal then, still very much a serviceindustry for clients, and Lee struggled to contend with the creative restraints the conservative agency placed on his talents. “It was this ‘How big do you want the logo, sir?’ attitude,” he notes. “All they cared about was milking money out of their clients and giving them what they wanted, the kind of formula that makes for so much of the bad work in our industry.” The narrow thinking at NW Ayer, a venerable agency that dated back to the Victorian patent-medicine era, weighed heavily on Lee: “When I went into this business it was a TV commercial, a billboard, and maybe a magazine ad and that was it. It was always frustrating because I believed this thing about trying to find the voice for a brand.” He laughs, “So I was head of the escape committee. By the time I left they realized I was an insidious cancer preaching rebellion. Rise up! They can’t do shit unless we make ads for them. We should be in charge!”