Steve. Believe.

On Tuesday night, starting at 5:30PM and lasting for about four hours, there was a celebration of Steve Hayden held at the Harvard Club.

There were dozens of Ogilvy luminaries there. And client luminaries. And people like myself not so luminous but who had light shined on them by Steve when he was Vice Chairman at Ogilvy.

The great art director, my sometime partner and friend Marc Klein had a lot to do with putting the event together. And Marc built this website, as well, called The Remarkable Life of Steve Hayden. It's a remarkable job.

Every one of the thousands of people Steve guided has a thousand stories to tell about something surpassing Steve did for them, or gave them the confidence to do. Steve was so kind and generous, the paranoia in me thought he must have an ulterior motive. No one is that fine. Except for Steve.

But this post, really, is not about Steve.

There has been plenty about Steve. 

This post is about something that at least in an advertising sense is bigger than Steve. Something fifty-percent of our industry has forgotten. And the other fifty-percent never even knew existed.

All the great work that Steve had a hand in, all the people whose careers he helped, all the clients he guided and whose share-prices he bolstered was based on one thing.

All of it.

A powerful, human idea.

A powerful, human idea.

A powerful, human idea.

An idea that made you want something. That clarified a promise. Most important, a powerful, human idea that made you feel optimistic about what's to come. Optimistic about tomorrow. Optimistic about life on earth. That it's not a zero-sum game. That there's joy and hope and love and laughter.

The above is not the same as so much of the platitudinous pablum you see everywhere today. Like Oprah Winfrey administered through a rose-colored morphine drip. Or those socks that say "you go, girl" on them. This was optimism and hope based on products that delivered on their promises.

That's not a bad definition of what advertising can do.

These powerful, human ideas were always sentinels. Beacons that told people like me--a pair of hands--how I had to write, what I had to express, the belief I had to help spread. And because the advertising had convinced me, I could readily convince others.

Advertising is not after all, and I repeat, about the latest doodads and gimmickry and trends and awards and fake awards and more fake awards. It's not about margins and borderless-ness and financial legerdemain. It's not about panels and pontificating and pomposity. It's about truth.

As Bernbach said and Hayden embodied, it is and always will be leveraging simple, timeless human truths for client advantage.

I spoke last night to Ogilvy's CEO Emeritus, Shelly Lazarus. Shelly's always been kind and a clarifying voice. When she spoke to the assemblage she recounted this story, which I first read in Steve's New York Times obituary from back in September, 2025.

I mentioned this to Shelly. 

That the powerful, human idea or the "ability to distill complexity to simple, marketable concepts," is where the "value-add" is in our business. 

It's the part of what we do (when we're at our best) that makes us (when we're at our best) worth all the bullshit agencies so often put clients through. It's the part of what we do that when we do it well means we're always always always worth more than we cost.

That's the opposite of the commoditization that's the reality of the place today--where agency "brands" are meaningless, because everyone produces the same work, under the same rules, for the same 'race-to-the-bottom' prices, and then proffers the same excuses for the same crap.

That ability to distill is what allows a campaign to grow, to take on a life and to give a dopey faceless unknown company meaning.

It allows people to like you and me to care. 

It's the part of what we do that we've forgotten.

That many of the industry's leaders don't even know exists.
That we no longer believe in.
That we allowed clients to "procure" out of existence.

Without that distillation, without that power, as an industry, we're just a noise machine. 

We're tales told by idiots.
Full of sound and fury.
Signifying nothing.

Or, Steve.