When Chiat/Day unleashed Apple's "1984" Super Bowl spot, the world saw a young flaxen-haired Olympian hurl a sledgehammer in the face of Big Brother/Big Blue. The tag line: Why 1984 won't be like 1984. Now, ten years later, the visionary Jay Chiat is hurling the technological mallet again, this time at the image of his own company. His goal - to create the office of the future (code-named Chrysalis)- requires nothing less than the complete destruction of the workplace paradigm.
The first thing to go will be your desk. When you come to work you'll have to check in as you would at a hotel, and the concierge will issue the correct items for the day: If you'll be on the road, a PowerBook and a cellular phone; if you're part of a team, the keys to a locker and the number of a "project room." Next to go will be your phone number; the computer will know where to route your calls. Chiat envisions the office of the future as a campus with a library, workstations, rooms designed to be used for the length of one project, a big lounge, and lots of networked monster computers. Screens everywhere will display information like schedules, maps, headlines, timelines, and, of course, deadlines.
The office will live only as an abstract metaphor, an animated and object- oriented virtual locale. Plop down at any computer and your "office" will pop up. Call your boss by clicking on your department icon and then selecting an image of her face - wherever she is, her phone will ring. If, before you place the call, you want to "peek" into her virtual office, just double-click; there she is on the phone, a cartoon figure speaking long distance. And there you are - or at least there's a cartoon that looks like you - right beside her "office."
Will Jay Chiat's vision come to pass? Adweek recently reported that the agency is "boxed in," squeezed between its expansionist '80s borrowing and the stagnant '90s economy - and that was before the agency lost its US$140 million Reebok account. It's too early to tell whether Chiat/Day's Chrysalis will metamorphose into the ad agency of the future or succumb to its metastasizing financial difficulties. But like Apple, Chiat/Day is legendary for its groundbreaking work, quality product, and corporate resilience.
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