Jay Chiat, the advertising executive whose firm created the drum-beating Energizer bunny and introduced Apple as the "computer for the rest of us," died of prostate cancer early Tuesday at his Venice beach home. He was 70.
Chiat was credited with making Los Angeles an advertising powerhouse in the 1980s and 1990s with a new "West Coast style" of subtle logos and strong messages. In one of his firm's most famous campaigns, Chiat/Day emblazoned billboards in Los Angeles and 10 other cities during the 1984 Olympic Games with awe-inspiring pictures of famous athletes such as Carl Lewis, Joan Benoit and John McEnroe. The only sales pitch was oblique: just a small Nike swoosh in one corner.
Another Chiat/Day ad, one of the most studied in American marketing, unveiled the Apple Macintosh during the 1984 Super Bowl. The commercial featured a woman smashing through a giant image of Big Brother--but no picture of the new machine or description of its capabilities.