Inside Steve's Brain - Leander Kahney [43]
Day to day at Apple, meetings with Jobs can often be arguments—long, combative arguments. Jobs relishes intellectual combat. He wants a high-level discussion—even a fight—because it’s the most effective way to get to the bottom of a problem. And by hiring the best people he can find, he ensures the debate is at the highest possible level.
A meeting with Jobs can be a trial by fire. He’ll challenge everything that is said, sometimes extremely rudely. But it’s a test. He is forcing people to stick up for their ideas. If they feel strongly enough, they’ll defend their position. By raising the stakes, and people’s blood pressures, he’s testing to see if they know their facts and have a strong argument. The more firmly they stand, the more likely they’re right. “If you’re a yes-man you’re doomed with Steve because he’s pretty confident about what he knows, so he needs someone to challenge him,” ex-Apple programmer Peter Hoddie told me. “Sometimes he says, ‘I think we need to do this’—and it’s a test to see if anyone will challenge him. These are the kinds of people he’s looking for.”15
Even if Jobs is bluffing, it’s extremely difficult to bullshit him. “If you don’t know what you’re talking about, he’s going to find out,” said Hoddie.
“He’s really bright. He’s extremely well informed. He has access to some of the best people on the planet. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, he’s gonna know.”
Despite his reputation as an ill-tempered taskmaster, Jobs has been more than capable of working very well with people. During his thirty-year career, he has maintained a string of creative partnerships, beginning with his high school buddy Steve Wozniak. The list includes the original Mac design team, from the hardware genius Burrell Smith to programming luminaries such as Alan Kay, Bill Atkinson, and Andy Hertzfeld. In the decade Jobs has been working with design genius Jonathan Ive, Apple has led the world in industrial design. His partners at Apple include Jon Rubinstein, who oversaw a string of hit hardware, from the iMac to the iPod; and Ron Johnson, who masterminded Apple’s retail stores, one of the most successful moneymaking chains ever. And at Pixar, his teaming with Ed Catmull and John Lasseter created a moviemaking powerhouse.
One of Jobs’s most productive working partnerships has been with Lee Clow, a tall, bearded hippie adman, and his agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day. Jobs’s partnership with Clow and his agency has spanned several decades and produced some of advertising’s most memorable and influential campaigns, from the 1984 TV spot that introduced the Macintosh, to the iPod silhouette ads plastered across billboards worldwide.
Headquartered in Los Angeles, TBWA\Chiat\Day is considered one of the most creative advertising companies in the world. Cofounded in 1968 by Guy Day, an L.A. ad veteran, and Jay Chiat, a hard-driving New Yorker who relocated to sunny Southern California in the mid-1960s, the company is now run by its longtime creative director, Lee Clow. The company was once considered “gonzo” for its controversial, sometimes reckless approach to advertising, but has matured and now boasts sober, blue-chip clients such as Nissan, Shell, and Visa.
For Apple, the company has produced widely acclaimed, award-winning campaigns that are often regarded more as cultural events than mere advertising blitzes. Ads like “Think Different,” “Switchers,” and “I’m a Mac” have been widely discussed, critiqued, parodied, and copied. When a campaign spawns hundreds of parodies on YouTube and is turned into a sketch on late-night comedy shows, it is safe to say the ads have graduated from the commercial to the cultural realm.
Jobs’s association with the ad company began in the early 1980s, when the agency—then known as Chiat\Day—was producing a series of popular