Howard Luck Gossage said...

Howard Luck Gossage said “I think a successful ad man has to have something missing in his character, just like a successful actor does.”
I have a very strong need to please. I have a rather strong tendency to please through the strategy of appreciation. My compulsive curiosity is an aid here. To appreciate, one must first understand. I am driven to do the work of understanding. It isn’t work to me at all.
This need to please is, perhaps, my hole. This, in itself, isn’t a problem. In fact, it’s been the hot poker spurring me on to ad success.
The problem is, I’m spending too much time with partners and employees, followed by clients – I’m understanding, appreciating, and pleasing the wrong people.
What is needed is to repeatedly get me in the room with the target audience. I need to spend most of my time with the people I must please to succeed for the client. I need to orchestrate the same for my people.
I am driven to connect with an audience. The target audience is the missing ingredient. That’s really all there is.
I reject award show judges as my audience. Much as I respect my enlightened competitors, clients and colleagues, I also reject them as my audience.
I require a process of discovering my audience in order to do what I do. It can’t be second hand. I can’t just read someone else’s research. I need to see, hear, touch, feel, converse with them. I need to get to know them. I need to try out my material on them, play a lot of rooms, die out there, and evolve a routine, like a stand-up. Except that my routine is a campaign. That is and always has been the answer for me.
I have no other genius than that. It is the only path for me.
Last night, accepting his Oscar, Forrest Whittaker said that he does what he does to connect with...everybody. I identify with that motivation, with that need. And I know that the way to make it work is to connect with somebody. And so, I think, does he.