The Howard Gossage Four Point Program. Four Simple Steps for Better Advertising, a Better World, and a Better Life. By Bruce Bendinger
Howard Gossage
I was recently asked when I really understood Howard Gossage. I thought for a moment. “About three years after we published The Book of Gossage.”
It was, perhaps, not the answer anyone expected, including me, but it was the truth.
Kim Rotzoll and Jeff Goodby put me on the road to understanding, but it took a while. And even though Howard Gossage may have a lot to teach us, the lessons aren’t obvious.
You have to spend a little time thinking about it. You must also invest in a few late evenings in enjoyable discussions with interesting companions, and then, eventually, it comes to you.
To help you start thinking (and living) in the right direction, we’ve prepared Howard’s Four Point Program.
However, for those of you expecting “Four Ways to a Better Headline” or “How to Get a Job in San Francisco,” you may be disappointed. It involves a great deal more than clever ways to win in the narrow world of advertising – it helps you understand a bit more about the larger world of business – and, most important, best practices for the business of life, one that Howard felt should be lived to the fullest.
With that in mind, here are The Four Points. Feel free to take notes.
1. Leave Room for the Mouse. This was a favorite line of Howard’s and, I think, the key to understanding how he made his advertising interactive decades before there was an Internet. Howard had his tricks – the amusing contest, the semi-serious pronouncement, and, of course, the coupon asking you to send in a bit of yourself along with your name and address. It all worked in a quietly spectacular way. (Howard, elitist that he was, also tended to run his ads in The New Yorker, a magazine with readers Howard could relate to – and they did.) Responses to Howard’s coupons and contests were turned into books – yes, books - created from responses to his advertising. Howard understood the importance of being interesting and involving and he did it, not by filling every nook and cranny with his own creativity and cleverness, but by having the generosity of spirit to invite the consumer to make their own contribution – an offer that was often accepted.
2. Take the Extra-Environmental View. OK, next big point. This is a thought contained in one of Howard’s best lines, which he went and attributed to someone else… “We don’t know who discovered water, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a fish.” Howard’s ads worked because he was far better at understanding “the game behind the game” – the world of media – the water all our little ads swim in. The leverage of that extra perspective gave Gossage a tremendous competitive advantage. Howard’s work resonated on a larger stage – just as his writings were as apt to appear in Harper’s as Advertising Age. Howard saw the behind the scenes connections and he knew how to work them. In the vaudeville act of advertising, he paid attention to the ventriloquist – not the dummy.
3. Stand Up and Be Counted. This was more than a headline for Irish Whiskey, it was a rock-solid belief. Howard believed that the power we have to communicate and persuade was also a responsibility – one with a higher purpose. Are we to be known only for the products we so artfully promote? More clever thumbtacks for the “billion-dollar hammer?” How about saving the planet with Friends of the Earth? Howard did that. Trying to stop a war – Howard was at the forefront of the anti-war movement, whatever the business consequence. He supported Ramparts magazine and a wide range of protest actions. With Rover cars, he worked to get people to wear seat belts decades before Detroit factored saving lives into their business equation. Even his small good deeds had sizable consequences. He helped a little classical radio station stay in business by inventing the Beethoven sweatshirt – a perfect fit for his Rainier Ale account. He worried about being remembered for that.
4. Flahoolick. This is our fourth and final point. It’s an Irish word Howard discovered (or invented, you never quite knew with Howard). It describes “princely exuberance.” It is that certain something that makes every party a celebration of life, every lunch and dinner a celebration of companionship and connection, and every moment, every day, one worth seizing. Howard lived that way. “He believed every man should be comfortable while engaging in the necessary business of rescuing the world.” And Howard wants you to make it part of your operating system. You can do this. Enjoy a long lunch with good friends. Put together a dinner with the finest minds you can fit around a table and see where the evening goes. Re-discover the joy of writing letters. Write something worth putting a stamp on. Send it. And see what happens. That’s how Howard became best friends with John Steinbeck. These things are available to all of us – waiting to enrich our lives and the lives of those around us. And don’t hold back for some silly reason like no one’s paying for it. Yet.
And that’s it. In a business that has a hard enough time getting your attention for thirty seconds, we honor someone whose legacy has lasted over thirty years. And I think Howard would approve that these somewhat large thoughts appear on the deceptively small stage of a well-thought out little Web site called ihaveanidea.
Howard had his own thoughts on that particular topic – felt most of us were fish who had not yet discovered the water we were swimming in.
Maybe so.
But even though he’s been gone some thirty years now, I know that Howard sends you his best – and hopes that his lessons can enrich your lives, the work we do, and the responsibility that comes with it.
Give it a thought. Can the work you do help build a better world?
Or are you just doing a lovely job of hammering expensive thumb tacks?
Yet again Apple succeed in blowing my mind and doing it with something that is almost a side comment to them.
