The Job of Remembering

How I got here

My interest in marketing - and by extension, my career in market research - can be traced back to my dad. A CPG marketing man during the heyday of advertising, he spent most of his career working for Richardson-Vicks. This was a lucky break for the father of seven girls: our house was always stocked with Vicks VapoRub, Clearasil, and Oil of Olay.

When he wasn’t traveling to Asia or Mexico for work, my father took Metro-North from Greenwich to Grand Central. Occasionally, my younger sister and I - the last of the girls - would accompany him to work. When we weren’t bringing everyone’s pencils to the electric sharpener (the noise we made!) we would visit the office of the creative director, whose set of refillable markers and tilted easel desk fascinated us.

During college, I spent a summer working at Richardson-Vicks, driving with him to the new headquarters in Wilton and leafing through Advertising Age in his office at the end of the day. Later, he helped me get an internship at Young & Rubicam on Madison Avenue. I rode the same train line he had ridden for years, did scut work on the Dr Pepper account, and spent my lunch hours in the New York Public Library reading room. Although I was committed to studying literature in college and graduate school, the days and months and years I spent exposed to and inspired by my father’s career nurtured my interest in why people think, feel, do, and buy the things we do.

My father was born in New York City in 1927, the same year movies got sound - a fitting time for the arrival of a man who always had a story to tell. It seemed my father knew everyone, or - more to the point - he always knew someone related in some meaningful way to whatever topic you happened to raise. This, I came to believe, was the product of both a remarkable life and also the Irish gift of blarney.

Now my father is 96, and the years are catching up with him. It’s been at least six months since he called offering business advice, referring to an interesting article, or sharing an idea to grow my business.

He is starting to forget. And that means I have to be sure to remember.