Image is Everything

Tennis superstar Andre Agassi was only nineteen years old when he starred in a television commercial for Canon cameras. The spot featured him in all sorts of eye-grabbing poses, a spectacle on display before the viewer’s clicking shutter. As the ad closes, he steps out of a white Lamborghini in a white suit to speak his only line: “Image”—he says with a sly smile, pausing, tilting his head down to drop his sunglasses and to reveal his serious gaze—“is everything.”

The ad caught fire. Agassi said that he heard the slogan a couple times a day, then six times a day, then ten, then…