Barbara Lippert's Critique

Jay hated clichés, so to call him a visionary or an innovator or an icon or a legend—although all true—would probably just make him laugh.

So maybe it’s better to say he was a stirrer upper: He liked to shake things up while sometimes knocking them down. That included the physical walls of the agency, as well as the people and the work created there.

He was his shop’s chief executive officer, not a creative person, so to describe him as “the father of the Energizer bunny” or the “author of ‘1984’ ” is a mistake (although he was a copywriter early in his career—and with his characteristic irrev e rence for titles and hierarchy in general, he became “president” of the original Chiat/Day based on a coin toss).