Howard Gossage
I’ve just been reading Steve Harrison’s excellent biography of Howard Gossage, Changing The World Is The Only Fit Work For A Grown Man (great title, and true).
(This is not a proper piece of film. It’s just the only way I can show the cover without uploading a picture, which WordPress won’t let me do).
It’s a rollicking good read, letting us briskly into the mind of a truly fascinating man.
He always did things his way, keeping his agency small to maintain quality (love to see anyone really brilliant trying that these days).
He developed interactivity in the 50s, always adding a coupon to his ads, even if it was just to ask the reader what was on their mind.
He created stunts fifty years ago that would put today’s efforts to shame. One of these involved inventing Beethoven sweatshirts to promote a beer. There had till that point never even been pictures on sweatshirts, but the demand for these was so great that it generated too many orders to cope with, along with thousands of press reports.
He also introduced us to wide scale environmentalism, first saving the Grand Canyon, the creating Earth Day.
My favourite part involves a story of a customer competition to name new colours for a shirt. Some of the suggestions were ‘Come And Get Me Copper’, ‘Medi Ochre’ and Statutory Grape’.
Top man, top book. Give it a read.
Hi Ben
Thought you’d be interested to know that we’re on the home path to completing a feature length documentary on Howard. You can see the current mood edit on the link above.
all the best
Ashley
Hi Ashley,
Looks good.
Best of luck,
Ben
He was an amazing man, intelligent, and with sense of humor, a true founding father of creative advertising.
In The Book of Gossage you can find the Pink Air Campaign – clever, and impactful stuff about… gasoline. It will be great if somebody make a film about him.
i love that Carl Ally himself piloted the plane when Howard Gossage’s widow tossed his ashes into the ocean. The two crazy ones united.
Dear Vinny, according to Dugald Stermer HLG didn’t have a lot of time for the ‘Young Turk’ as he called him. As Dugald told me, he said “I can take him or leave him, but not necessarily in that order.”
Cheers, Steve
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say. Just my opinion, it would make your posts a little livelier.