Tim O’Kennedy pays tribute to Dan Wieden

Somewhere in 1987, I got a call from Wieden+Kennedy in Portland. "Would I be interested in chatting to Dan and Dave about running the Nike business?" they asked.

At that point, W+K wasn’t much on the radar, save for two absolute knockout TV commercials they’d somehow managed to get made: one for Honda, the other for Nike, entitled ‘Revolution’. It certainly was a revolution, and I certainly was interested in chatting to them about running Nike.

So my interview took place over lunch at McCormick and Schmick’s in Portland and was, because Dan was still drinking back then, a ‘wet’ lunch involving a plate of deep-fried calamari with a side of neat scotch for Dan and I have no idea what for me. Dan’s lunch is easy to recall, because that’s what he had for lunch pretty much every day. One of the reasons I can’t remember what I ate is that I was instantaneously smitten and rendered senseless by this utterly disarming human being, whose passing a few days ago was a punch to the gut for me and countless other W+K alumni all around the world.

Dan and Dave were both formidable talents, but Dan’s impact on all of us – while working there, and afterwards – transcended talent. He was like the world’s best parent, a trait that came from someplace very deep inside him, not calculated or strategic but fundamental to his character. He radiated a natural, profound and absolutely genuine care for us as a group, and individually. He made us feel safe, and loved.

Not only did he create a literal and figurative space in which we could all do the best work of our lives, he fomented a culture in which the inevitable missteps and failures were badges of honour – if you and those around you somehow grew as a result. He made sure that lots of these ultimately productive failures happened by giving almost all of us way too much responsibility for things that were way too important to f*** up. I contributed more than my fair share of these.

As good parents do, he also let us know very clearly where the limits were: he had rules, which still serve as exemplars to anyone attempting to build a business culture. They were (and are, I believe):

• The work comes first
• Don’t act big
• Follow derections
• No sharp stuff
• Shut up when someone else is talking

Dan always claimed that these rules were found on a scrap of paper left by builders who’d worked on the original Portland building. My hunch is that this backstory is horseshit. I think it’s very likely that Dan wrote the whole lot, down to the knowingly-misspelt ‘derections’. And it’s genius. It’s timeless, as accessible to the janitor as to anyone else, relevant in any situation, 24/7/365 – and a perfect distillation of his sensibilities.

(As simple as the rules were, Dan was not afraid to shoot over the heads of an audience, as witnessed by a generally dumbfounded Portland Chamber of Commerce as Dan explained to them that his organizational model for Wieden+Kennedy was “slime mold”….)

The anecdotes are plentiful, and also diminishing of his legacy because Dan was so much more than a set of good stories. He changed us all profoundly, and most of all in the advice he gave us for developing our own talents: he told us, time and again, that the most important thing was to “find your voice”, an elegant way of saying ‘know who and what you are, independent of any outside influences and then be that voice’. That turns out to be easier said than done.

Like so much of what Dan said, the audience was ostensibly the people working in a small ad agency in Portland, Oregon. In truth, most of what the man said was universal.

Keenly missed and unforgettable.