In appreciation of Steve

As documented on these very pages, I have been doing some Dostadning, the art of Swedish Death Cleaning. As I was going through my garage I discovered the laminated remnants of my checkered past in journeyman copywriting. 

Some good. Most bad. And some even endowed with the power to trigger PTSD. 

A week after discovering these gems in my garage, I heard of the passing of Steve Hayden. I had the rarefied privilege to work for Steve as well as for Lee Clow.  Something I never could've imagined while chugging beer with friends 10 years earlier and watching Apple's 1984 spot take America's breath away.

Like many, I'd like to take this opportunity to tell one of my Hayden stories. I have a few. You can read the tale of Baikalskaya Vodka and our intrepid dealings with Russian Mafia, at least that's what Steve told me that when we worked on the pitch.

But this is more indicative of Steve's generosity and paternal leanings.

I had arrived at BBDO West in 1993. Apple had just switched their brand new microprocessing chip and wanted to do 10 consecutive days of full page ads (long copy) to herald what they saw as a turning point in their downward spiral. Naturally, They assigned me, the new guy, who knew nothing about computers to write the sleepy opus of their RISC chip -- the equivalent of showing how the digital sausage was made.

While Jobs was no longer at the helm, the leadership at Apple was non-existent. It was run by competing committees all vying for more power in Cupertino. In short, it was a clusterfuck. Or, as Chris Wall once famously put it in an internal memo the Creative Department treasured: "Their thinking was as clear as mud."

For my first month at BBDO, I was there until midnight, almost every night. If you know me at all, you know that would cut into my Jeopardy time.

Steve saw me floundering (sinking) and like a true, but very WASPy looking, mensch, stepped into the breach. He didn't write the ads for me. He did something better. He sat me down, eyeballed the brief and gave me a detailed explanation of the technical aspects that went into those early days of computing. 

He insisted I write the ads and together, we went over them, often as the janitorial crew was finishing up their duties at 10960 Wilshire Blvd. And often, with lots of red pen changes which kept me from watching David Letterman. 

He didn't save my ass. He showed me how to save my own ass. And in the process put me on a career trajectory that was guided by my father's sage advice decades earlier: "If you're gonna do a job, do it right." 

It was heartwarming to read the impact Steve had on the lives of colleagues, copywriters and art directors, throughout the years. I've had lots of bosses over the years. Steve was one I actually wanted to spend time with. For his wit, his wisdom and his surprisingly juvenile sense of humor. He leaves a legacy all of us can only dream of.

And now for some schadenfreude and some self-deprecation (which Steve had in spades) I give you one of those Wall Street Journal ads. (Click the photo to enlarge, if you're so inclined to read the sleep-inducing copy.)

"Hey Dennis (my art director partner at the time), if you make the pictures bigger I won't have to write so much copy."