{"id":33755,"date":"2020-05-25T20:33:09","date_gmt":"2020-05-26T01:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adpulp.wpengine.com\/?p=33755"},"modified":"2020-05-26T11:35:50","modified_gmt":"2020-05-26T16:35:50","slug":"howard-luck-gossage-ad-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adpulp.com\/howard-luck-gossage-ad-legend\/","title":{"rendered":"Howard Luck Gossage, Ad Legend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howard Luck Gossage is a cult figure. He is considered by some of today’s practitioners, myself included, as one of the greatest creatives of all time.<\/p>\n

He converted an old firehouse in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco and began to \u201chold court\u201d therein. Gossage was friends with Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, and Tom Wolfe, among others, and he liked to entertain his heady friends at the agency.<\/p>\n

Given the company he was keeping, it\u2019s no surprise that he famously said, \u201cPeople don\u2019t read advertising, they read what interests them and sometimes it\u2019s an ad.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Illustration by Jason Walton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gossage understood that you can\u2019t bore people into liking you or buying from you. He shared this understanding with Bill Bernbach and David Ogilvy. Here\u2019s where he diverged\u2014Gossage believed you need to entertain. You need to be a showman. You need to invent things that were not there before. In this he is more like Leo Burnett.<\/p>\n

Kim B. Rotzoll was an author and dean of the College of Communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He wrote the Gossage chapter in the excellent book, The Ad Men and Women: A Biographical Dictionary of Advertising <\/em><\/a>by Edd C. Applegate. Professor Rotzoll notes that Gossage graduated from the University of Kansas City, he served as a fighter pilot during WWII and worked as the promotions manager for KLX in San Francisco before he got into the agency game.<\/p>\n

“All of the jobs I have had since the navy (and three before) have either resulted in firing or in leaving the dungeon, save two, I think…I am not a very good boss, but a damn sight better than any other, for me,” Gossage said.<\/p>\n

Fill Up on Pink Air<\/h2>\n

This is \u201cPink Air\u201d for Fina by Gossage\u2019s firm, which never grew beyond 13 staff members. Note the press clipping inside the ad. Gossage understood PR better than most and he used it to get wider distribution for his clients’ messages, and in the case below to lend added credibility to the message.<\/p>\n

\"\"There\u2019s no such thing as pink air, is there? But Gossage makes it sound believable, even though he wasn\u2019t after believability. He wanted to capture the interest of motorists, and his ads for Fina did that.<\/p>\n

The call to action in this ad is also a thing to behold: “…so the next time you see a Fina station you’ll recognize it. And if it’s on your side so you don’t have to make a U-turn and there aren’t six cars waiting and you need gas or something, please stop in.”<\/p>\n

It’s hard to say if Gossage is poking fun at the hard sell or the soft sell here. Maybe it’s both. What’s not in question is that he’s created a lane for himself and Fina with Pink Air.<\/p>\n

Gossage Helped the Sierra Club Save the Grand Canyon from Flooding<\/h2>\n

\u201cIf they can turn the Grand Canyon into a \u2018cash register,\u2019 is any national park safe? You know the answer.” Gossage liked to champion good causes, and when the Bureau of Reclamation wanted to flood the Grand Canyon in the 1960s, Gossage went to work making sure the pencil pushers in D.C. did not win, and thankfully, they did not win. Gossage, common sense and the American people won.<\/p>\n

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This campaign for the Sierra Club helped to save the Grand Canyon from being flooded. This is advertising at its highest use. At the same time, this is both direct response and<\/em> interactive advertising. For Gossage, the ad was not an end in itself. The ad was a vehicle for change.<\/p>\n

His Legacy and His Work Continue To Fascinate<\/h2>\n

As the Fina ad illustrates, Gossage saw the benefit of integrating PR into his communications plans. The ads he wrote were usually just the starting point for a campaign message that would then be amplified by the press, television and radio, and any number of different media.<\/p>\n

Gossage called it his \u2018ad platform technique\u2019. We might call it \u201camplified advertainment\u201d but whatever we call it, let\u2019s remember to entertain our client\u2019s customers.<\/p>\n

In 2012, Dan Goldgeier interviewed<\/a> Gossage biographer<\/a>, Steve Harrison, for Adpulp.com. The following video interview from Dominik Imseng goes even deeper into Gossage lore and Harrison is the man to ask. He mentions in the video that Gossage was a promoter more so than an ad maker, and that’s a keen insight.<\/p>\n