Alex Bogusky has been testing out Posterous, the blog-like-thing that you post to via email. Up until now, it’s been a place for him to share some photos, mostly of his dirt bike adventures. But yesterday, Bogusky went another way and shared some insights into his agency’s core beliefs and consequent rainmaking ability.
Tell other people your dreams. This was the biggie for us. For years Chuck and I had this secret understanding that we wanted to be a great agency some day. Whatever that meant. But it was one of those aspirations that you didn’t dare say out loud to anybody because it was just too ludicrous…our mission became, “To create the most talked about and written about advertising in the world.” At the time we probably hadn’t yet achieved that goal in Miami or Florida. So it was embarrassingly lofty.
As for identifying the right partners/clients, Bogusky says:
Find some real passion in the building for the business or take a pass on it. We have a rule that says we can’t pitch a piece of business unless at least one of the partners is passionate about that business. And billings/money is not an acceptable reason for passion. It can be anything BUT money.
In other words, if you want to be great, you need to be insanely passionate and ambitious. It won’t happen any other way.
