I was lucky enough to begin my career in market research before the final curtain came down on the Mad Men era of marketing. I never knew any first-generation Mad Men, but I was tutored by their next-generation protégés and apostles. One of whom was the legendary Larry Light.
I wasn’t particularly close to Larry nor did I work closely with him. But his ideas, his influence and his master strokes of innovation have been a constant in my career. Indeed, whether you realize it or not, they have been a constant in your career, too.
Larry was one of a handful of marketers whose thinking and example shaped an entire era of business. It is the one we are working in right now. Larry invented brand communications for the digital era. He did so as Global CMO for McDonald’s, rolling it out in 2004 as brand journalism, most notably manifesting in the i’m lovin’ it campaign. It is what we do today in all the ways Larry anticipated back then—content marketing, content sharing, influencer marketing, viral marketing, social media, social commerce, user-generated content, native advertising, retargeting, personalization.
Larry foresaw an interactive future of dialogue and fragmentation. He got there ahead of it, showing us how to succeed in a marketplace that would demand, as he wrote looking back a decade later, a “content stream approach” of “multi-dimensional messages via multiple channels to multiple audiences,” not just “a single, repetitive message.” Larry instructed us to “think like a journalist,” not like a traditional marketer.
Which is ironic. Because Larry made his bones as a Mad Men marketer. He started at BBDO in the early sixties, bringing the nascent field of marketing science into its research practice. He moved to Ted Bates, eventually rising to Chairman and CEO of its international group. After a merger, he left to start his consultancy, Arcature, with stints along the way running marketing at McDonald’s and IHG.
I first encountered Larry at Yankelovich where he served on our advisory board. Kevin Clancy, our Chairman and another legendary figure, had started at BBDO at the same time as Larry. A few years later, a newly hired Yankelovich CEO and I tried unsuccessfully to hire Larry. It was during this time that Larry’s ideas on brand equity were being put into action with the development of Brand Asset Valuator by Stuart Agres at Y&R. I’d bump into Larry at the occasional conference, but his thinking circulated widely. My last interaction was during his time at IHG, for which we did a segmentation and collaborated on some thought-leadership pieces.
Larry’s legacy is everywhere. It’s in what we do. But it’s also there for us to study. Larry co-authored four impactful books; Six Rules for Brand Revitalization, Six Rules of Brand Revitalization (second edition), New Brand Leadership, and The Paradox Planet. He also contributed 150 articles here on Branding Strategy Insider over the past four years. He never stopped sharing his thinking.
You can count on two hands the business thinkers whose impact will endure—Peter Drucker, Ted Levitt, Philip Kotler, Michael Porter, Jack Trout, Al Ries. To that list I would add Larry Light. He championed brands. He challenged brand managers. He changed marketing. RIP, Larry Light.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider By Walker Smith, Chief Knowledge Officer, Brand & Marketing at Kantar
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