THE TROUBLE WITH ADVERTISING
Considering the heavyweights (Jeff Goodby, Stan Freburg, Jay Conrad) who put it together
in 1986, The Book Of Gossage
couldn't be anything less than a landmark.
Living in a totally
different era, it is difficult to decide whether Howard Luck Gossage, called the 'Socrates
of San Francisco', was advertising's enfant terrible or it's greatest defender.
Indeed he said some earth-shattering things, that would make Ogilvy's Confessions of An Ad Man, looks like a children's fable. He called Copywriters
"very strange people who have only reached copywriting after eliminating every other
means of making a living through writing". He is observations were so well put that
it made the industry take a good look at what business it was really in.
There is too much of advertising, he complains. "If
you have something pertinent to say, you neither have to say it to very many people --only
to those who you think will be interested--nor do you have to say it very often. How many
times do you have to be told that your house is on fire?" Gossage compares
advertising to, God forbid, fertilizer!. It's a disturbing metaphor. There is only so much
fertilizer one ought to use, he observes, but people tend to lay it on so think, that it
begins to obliterate the crop it was supposed to nurture. At which point it starts to
attract flies, the neighbours complain and the stench is unbearable! The whole point of
all this is attack the commission-based business model, and move to a fee-based model.
That way, he observes, ad campaigns will be based not on how much the client can spend,
but on the problem that needs to be solved.
As an insider, Howard Gossage has to be taken seriously. He
did write long copy, especially the one (immortalized in Ogilvy On Advertising) headlined: "SHOULD WE ALSO FLOOD THE SISTINE
CHAPEL SO THAT TOURISTS CAN GET NEARER THE CEILING?" for the Sierra Club.
In his article, "Advertising and the Facts of Life",
he puts describes the 'ethical hypocisy' of Speculative Presentations as an euphemism for
stealing. Gossage advocates ads that are responsible, yet those that stick their neck out.
Some other uncanny observations:
"Our first duty is not to the old sales curve, it is to
the audience."
"I like outdoor advertising. I just think it has no right to be outdoors."
"Nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it's an ad."
"Is advertising worth saving? From an economic point of view I don't think that most
of it is. From an aesthetic point of view, I'm damn sure it's not." |
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