Steve Hayden (copywriter)

Steve Hayden is a well-known figure in the field of advertising. He is the Vice Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy Worldwide.

Stephen Edward Hayden was born on May 21, 1947 in St. Louis, Missouri. His father was an internist and his mother was an opera singer. He was the youngest of four sons. In 1949, when Steve was two years old, his family relocated to San Jose, California where his father was the first internist in the area and eventually ran the O'Connor Hospital there. At 14, Steve was sent to boarding school at the Interlochen Center for the Arts where he studied cello (and where he now serves as chairman of the board of trustees). After graduating from high school at Interlochen, he moved to Los Angeles to go to school at University of Southern California. He graduated in 1968 with a degree in English.

Hayden launched his career in Detroit as a copywriter on the General Motors corporate account. When he returned to California, he divided his attention between advertising and television scriptwriting (for Welcome Back, Kotter), eventually focusing on advertising. After honing his craft at a number of agencies on a variety of accounts, Steve was recruited to Chiat-Day where he and Lee Clow made advertising history as co-creators of the breakthrough 1984 Orwellian take-off campaign for Apple Inc..

Hayden is one of the most important figures of the late twentieth century advertising, leading creative teams at both Chiat/Day and BBDO on the Apple Computer account. In the late 1970s, when Chiat picked up the Apple account through the acquisition of Regis McKenna's advertising practice, computers were widely considered to be obscure and expensive machines for use by technical professionals and large organizations.

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