postaer/jas/mike1st/mark2nd

Larry Postaer

Executive Vice President/Director of Creative Services

Rubin Postaer and Associates

Age: 58

Larry Postaer’s early advertising career was spent on the shores of Lake Michigan, where he channeled his creative juices into campaigns for Wrigley Field, Hubba Bubba bubble gum and Bud Light.

As one of the youngest creative directors in America in 1964, Postaer oversaw the creation of “The Racer’s Edge” for STP Corp.

In 1981, after stints at several Chicago-area agencies, Postaer was asked by his bosses at Needham Harper & Steers to transfer out of the agency’s Chicago office and join a guy named Gerry Rubin in the agency’s Los Angeles office.

Since then, Rubin and Postaer have been an inseparable part of Los Angeles advertising and in 1986, they formed their own firm, buying out Needham L.A.

Postaer says his style is to get out of the way and let his team’s creative juices percolate. “I assemble a team very carefully, based on their strengths and talents,” he said.

“I don’t personally compete with people at this point in my life. I feel that this way we get better work out of them,” he said. “I do provide guidance and counseling in the early stages of a campaign encouragement as well as discouragement, if necessary.”

Postaer credits his durability to good grounding. His steps up the ladder have been on “tippie toes” from his first job as a catalog copywriter for Sears Roebuck & Co. to ever-larger agencies with increasing levels of responsibility.

Postaer calls his long-running work for American Honda Motor Co. the crowning achievement of his career. “There’s no question that we have had a very good, long run with Honda,” he said. “I feel like I have never embarrassed myself yet.”

Postaer laughs about the agency’s am/pm Mini-Markets “Two Cokes” campaign – in which a twenty-something tries to limit his purchase at the store to just two cokes. He has a great critic for the convenience-store chain’s ad his 18-year-old son who loves to shop there.

That son, a musician now attending USC, is the only one of Postaer’s three sons not following in their father’s advertising footsteps.

When not overseeing the creative end of campaigns for such clients as Charles Schwab, the Los Angeles Kings and Discover Magazine, Postaer can be found honing his skills on the golf course.

Julie Sable