In 1981, MTV was launched: a cable TV channel that was nothing but popular music, mainly rock & roll.

The problem was music videos didn’t exist then, no one made them because there was nowhere to watch them.  So a TV channel showing non-existent music videos was a dumb idea, no one was interested.

Music publishers said the channel could kill their business, why would anyone buy records if they could watch it on TV?

Record companies laughed at the idea of producing music videos for free.

Clients and ad agencies couldn’t see the point in putting ads on a channel that was just songs.

Cable operators said it didn’t have any benefit over music radio, why would anyone sit down to watch music?

MTV spent a fortune on advertising but none of it worked. After a year MTV was dying because the cable companies wouldn’t carry it.

That was when they called George Lois.

For Lois, advertising wasn’t the one-dimensional business it is for most of us. For him advertising worked anywhere you could think of.

The creative part was to think of something no one else would even dare think of.

He redefined MTV’s problem: You’ve got supply without demand. We need to create a demand that the cable companies are forced to supply.

MTV didn’t have any customers. So Lois said that was the idea.

He would use the non-customers to do the advertising.

The kids couldn’t watch MTV because the cable-channels wouldn’t carry it. So Lois decided the rallying cry would be “I want my MTV”.

He decided to start at the top and, in rock & roll, the top was Mick Jagger.

Lois asked him to do a launch ad, but Jagger said “No, the Stones don’t do advertising”.

So Lois explained that this wasn’t the Stones advertising for someone else.  MTV would be playing Stones’ music so it would be advertising for the Stones, which would sell a lot of Stones’ records.

And all he needed him to do was say 4 words.

So Mick Jagger agreed to repeat the line to camera, that was all, nothing else.

Then they ran the commercial saying:

MVO: “If you don’t get MTV where you live, call your cable operator and say…

Mick Jagger (shouting into phone:) “I want my MTV” 

Once the other rock stars saw Mick Jagger do it, everyone wanted to be in on it: Pete Townshend, David Bowie, Sting, George Michael, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Dire Straits, Pat Benatar, Stevie Nicks, Lionel Richie, Hall & Oates, Tears for Fears, Cyndi Lauper, ZZ Topp, Eurythmics, Billy Idol, Boy George, The Thunderbirds, Van Halen, Huey Lewis and the News, The Cars….

All of them telling kids to call their cable operator and yell: “I want my MTV”.

Straight away, so many kids began calling their cable operators that the lines were jammed. Cable operators started calling MTV saying: “We’ll take the channel, just stop running those damned commercials.”

Within months, MTV was in 80% of all households.

Record companies rushed to make videos for the channel.

Clients and ad-agencies looked at MTV as a must-buy for viewers 14 to 28.

Then Dire Straits released the single ‘Money for Nothing’ which began and ended with Sting singing plaintively “I want my MTV”.

That track sold 4.8 million copies and was played an incalculable number of times on the radio, and each time it’s a free commercial for MTV.

Time magazine called MTV “the most spectacular pop culture phenomenon since the advent of cable television – and, arguably, since the invention of TV itself.”

And MTV only exists because George Lois created a storm of free advertising.

Advertising that wasn’t even advertising.

And I guarantee you, AI could never have thought of doing anything like that.

The post WHAT AI CAN’T THINK OF first appeared on Dave Trott's Blog.