What's Working at Small to Mid-size Ad Agencies (Home)

by Tony Mikes



I’ve taken some time to write about Steve Jobs. He was very important in my life. He helped me to be much more productive; he gave my creatives the tools to move to the next level of art production; and he forever endeared himself to me by allowing an old rock & roll fool to have his whole collection of hard-worn albums and CD’s all in one convenient place. Those were all important things.

But, he gave me pleasure in one more very important way.

He gave me hope—hope that the world could be more orderly, and most of all a more beautiful and elegant place.

Apple’s design was very important to the success of their products. Certainly, one could buy all the functionality needed in a Dell or HP, and for a lot less money. But, and this is a big but, you couldn’t be “slightly cooler than the next guy” unless you had an Apple product.

One writer describes the elegance that Jobs brought to the marketplace as “secular grace.” If grace is that beautiful gift from God to mankind, then Apple products were blessed with secular grace for their gift of beauty to users.

Ernie Perich, who runs a very creative agency in Ann Arbor, once said that he understood that advertising needed to be strategic, on target, and all that stuff. “We do this,” he told me. “All of our stuff makes sense, but what we offer beyond the on-target strategy is great design.”

“To us,” he went on, “great design is a gift we give our clients. It comes as part of our service and is never an add-on.”

Steve Jobs gave us a number of gifts in the products his company brought forth, including functionality, completeness, and efficiency. But the greatest gift was beauty, and the hope and grace that surround it.

So long, Steve.