Late Night Advice from Dan Wieden
A memory from the beginning of my advertising career in the halls of Dan's agency.
I once got some advice and inspiration directly from Dan Wieden, Mr. Just Do It himself about how to make a Nike ad.
After graduating from the experimental advertising school, Wieden+Kennedy 12, I was hired on to work on Nike Basketball as a creative. This was when LeBron James was newly emerging and battling Kobe Bryant for the title of world’s best player. Talk about being in the eye of a storm.
One night I was working late in the Portland office up on the 6th floor. I was surrounded by scattered, loose sheets of paper and stale coffee, trying to wrangle an idea and earn my stripes. It’s dark outside and the place is quiet. It seemed like a good moment for ideas to come.
Then I hear some footsteps from around the corner, and it’s Dan leaving his office and coming down the hallway. I look up and nod at him from across the way. He smiles and heads over to me in the empty cafeteria.
“What are you working on?”
I told him I was trying to come up with ideas for a campaign that featured both LeBron and Kobe. At this point, Dan wasn’t in the weeds on the Nike business, but I’d grown used to him stopping by every now and then to ask about the work. As usual, he took the conversation to a higher place and dropped some wisdom on me.
“You don’t have to worry about making the worst Nike ad ever. I’ve already taken care of that. And you don’t have to worry about making the best Nike ad ever, because you can’t control that. All you have to do, is figure out what you want to say. Do that, and everything will take care of itself.”
With this simple advice, Dan had handed me a creative compass. No matter how crazy or political things got, the only job I had was to figure out what I wanted to say. All the nonsense I can’t control can keep on shaking things up all around me, but as long as I get clear on what I’m trying to do, that’s my work.
Over time, this advice has resonated with me more and more. Dan’s words in my ear have relieved pressure, cut to the bottom of difficult briefs and provided a north star for how to get out of some dark places. At any moment, I can choose to focus on what I want to say, and it clears the air. I realized that is the core problem I can solve as a creative.
I was lucky to have been able to get direct lessons and advice from Dan Wieden as I was starting out in advertising. He framed communication around a very specific purpose that felt meaningful and important, even in an industry that is often overlooked as fluff. Dan was passionate about seeking human truths and delivering them in interesting and surprising ways. It was about encouraging people to figure out what they want to say, and then cultivating that point of view into sharp communication.
If you look at the legacy of work the agency has done for Nike and other brands, you will find that thread of human truth. People figuring out what they want to say. Whether it was Nike giving their platform to athletes to address racism and social injustice, or P&G taking a moment to not celebrate Olympic athletes, but the mothers that sacrificed to get them there. Those human truths and emotions all go back to Dan and his philosophy about the good you can do in advertising.
I am forever grateful for getting to peek behind the curtain and getting a chance to receive wisdom from Dan himself. His words, his laugh, his profanity, always felt like something out of a movie. Just a classic character with a passion for creativity, that somehow always told you what you needed to hear.
Andrew “Oyl” Miller is an advertising Creative Director and Copywriter. He spent 15 years working at Wieden+Kennedy on brands like Nike, PlayStation and IKEA. You can check out his work on his website.