Dan Wieden, CEO, Wieden and Kennedy, is seen at the 2011AdColor Award Show on Saturday September 17, 2011, in Beverly Hills, California.
Vince Bucci / AP
Dan Wieden — co-founder of the Portland-based advertising company Wieden+Kennedy who coined the Nike tagline “Just Do It” — died Friday at the age of 77. The company announced his death on Saturday.
Wieden and his former business partner, David F. Kennedy, together founded one of the most famous advertising companies in the world. To examine the impact of Wieden’s life and career, OPB’s Crystal Ligori spoke with Brian Bonilla, a reporter for Ad Age.
Crystal Ligori: Dan Wieden, the co-founder of one of the largest independent ad agencies in the world, died last week. Wieden+Kennedy is headquartered in Portland and employs over 1,000 people worldwide. And you’re definitely familiar with Dan Wieden’s work. He created what may be one of the world’s best known advertising taglines, “Just do it,” in a campaign for Nike. Here to help us remember Wieden is Brian Bonilla, he’s a reporter for Ad Age, an advertising and marketing industry publication.
So Wieden+Kennedy is famous in Portland, but can you remind us who Dan Wieden was?
Brian Bonilla: Well, I mean that’s such a hard question, but I will say, just covering the industry for a few years, it can’t be understated the impact that Wieden+Kennedy as the agency has had. But Dan Wieden, he was a humble person. He cared about his employees, but also, he cared about them in a way where he wanted them to grow. He put his agency in a trust in 2015, meaning the agency will be kept independent for the future. That was a big thing and he seemed like a goofy person, but someone that was excited to just create things. And inspire.
Ligori: Yeah, as I said, he might be most famous for the “Just do it” Nike campaign, but what else was he known for?
Bonilla: Well, there’s so many campaigns over the years that the agency and Dan has worked on — Old Spice for one. The “smell like a man” campaign, Honda, Bud Light, they had that “dilly dilly” campaign that was really popular. But I will say, you know what people hearkened back to the “just do it” slogan or campaign, it wasn’t just about that one slogan. It was about what preceded that. Partly what made Nike what it is today, was its sports marketing. The Bo Jackson work was some of my favorite just as a kid growing up, before I even knew what Weiden+Kennedy was.
Ligori: And for folks who don’t know what that is, that’s the “Bo knows” campaign, right?
Bonilla: Exactly. Bo Jackson famously was a two-sport player at a time where — well it’s still very rare — but it was super rare at the time. And it was a campaign showing the different things that Bo knows, and it was about creating work that was just different. It didn’t exist at the time.
Ligori: I had no idea that Wieden+Kennedy did the “Bo knows” campaign for Nike pre the “just do it” campaign. So an entire sort of sports marketing ethos was created by them.
Bonilla: Yeah, exactly.
Ligori: Brian, what are you hearing from people within the advertising world about Dan Wieden.
Bonilla: It’s really been an outpouring of stories, I would say. And it really ranges from some of the highest executives that you would hear from — David Droga, the CEO of Accenture Song, Jeff Goodby, the founder of Goody, Silverstein & Partners, Colleen DeCourcy, the chief creative officer for Snap. Just so many stories. One employee years ago got hired by the agency and he was saying that his friends thought it must have been a joke that he got hired at such a pristine agency. And he was speaking to Dan about it and he got Dan Wieden to take a picture with him where Dan was pretending to fire him as a joke for his friends.
And there was even one story where three days after the tragic events of 9/11, he visited with many of his employees, one on one. This was someone that if you work that Wieden at any point, I think, it’s something you carry on no matter where you are in your career.
Ligori: What kind of legacy does Dan Wieden leave?
Bonilla: So many of the executives that I’ve spoken to say he was the greatest advertising executive to ever live. I think that’s something that time will decide and maybe has decided already. But he was known for so many quotables, you know, and I think my favorite was “fail harder.” That phrase has always stuck with me and I think it spoke to what he wanted to inspire people to be like. Don’t be afraid to be unique, be quirky or be different.
Click on the play button at the top of this story to hear the audio version of this interview.