World Rugby CEO Brett Gosper's tip to beating pressure: Manage quality of time, effort & energy

By Shannon Tellis

Relaxing in a chair before a rugby press conference at the Bombay Gymkhana recently, Brett Gosper, World Rugby CEO and advertising stalwart, considered his good fortune.

“I lived at a very privileged time where you could actually have those two lives [rugby and advertising] at the same time,” said the 59-year-old Australian. “I was playing at a time when it was more amateur than it is today. I was able to train each day with my club in Paris and then work in an advertising agency later during the day.”


Having grown up around sports, Gosper began his rugby career playing for the State of Victoria and the Queensland rugby union squad. Simultaneously, he started as a graduate trainee with Ogilvy & Mather in Melbourne and Brisbane, Australia.

On being recruited by France’s oldest rugby club — the Racing Club de France (now Racing 92) in Paris — he transferred to Ogilvy & Mather Paris in 1982 to continue chasing both his passions. He would later become a group account director in 1986.

But pursuing a dual career wasn’t a field of roses. According to Gosper, his bosses were thrilled that he was a rugby player but work remained work.

“My employer enjoyed the fact that I played rugby, but I had to perform,” he said. “If a client needed me to be in the office at eight in the evening or midnight, then that was what had to be done. Occasionally, I’d miss training and my coach, at the racing club where I played, would either drop me from the team or discipline me in some other way. It was not always easy to juggle but my professional career usually took precedence over my rugby career in those days.”

Switching gears
However, rugby was not to be left behind and played a critical role in shaping Gosper’s advertising career. Regular training and fitness kept him mentally balanced and the pressure of playing at the top-level in front of large crowds in France had the added benefit of boosting his confidence.

“In advertising,” he said, “you’re often on your feet, you’re often put under pressure by client questions, management situations and seeing the planning of top coaches, top players — the preparation, the imagination — it really did help my business career. There’s a lot of complementarity between the two and taking out your frustrations on the rugby field certainly helped (laughs).”

Conversely, some of his marketing know-how helped his rugby team — devise some memorable pranks to rile up opponents. In the 1987 and 1990 French Championship finals, Gosper and his team took to the field in pink bowties. On another occasion, they entered from the dugout wearing berets.

“We got into this habit of wanting to annoy the provincial sides because they all saw us as the show ponies from Paris,” Gosper had said in an interview.

Making the choice
Two demanding careers could peacefully coexist for only so long. Ultimately, Gosper had to choose one.

“It started to get tough as my advertising career got more important,” he said. “I would have liked to play on but the demands on my time became too great so I had to stop at 30. And economically, the shift moved towards advertising.” He later conceived and led a number of successful campaigns like a watch brand’s ‘Don’t Crack Under Pressure’ project. Cracking under pressure is something that Gosper avoided by focusing on finding a balance. “You have got to manage the quality of your time, your effort and your energy,” he said.

According to Gosper, in an age where experimenting with side careers is common, striking the right balance is tough but doable.

“I think you can balance [a dual career] if you have passion for both of those things,” he said. “If you’re trying to pursue something that you’re not enjoying, it’s going to be difficult. So, my advice is, don’t do it for the money alone. Do it because you love something and you have an idea that you think can change the world or change a market or can change something. Make sure you’re not just targeting money, but to do something great.”