Gossage as we noted earlier had an audience-oriented philosophy and he firmly believed it to be in the self-interest of his clients to faithfully follow a 'customer-first' approach. How did his communication philosophy then work in practice?
He realized his philosophy in his advertising by using the three Gossage trademarks; the indirect approach using long copy, the frivolous contest, and the reply coupon (Rotzoll 1994). And his approach worked for clients as diverse as Fina Gasoline to Scientific American.Gossage gave the impression that he found clients to be a generally reasonable lot, particularly if they were relatively small and ready to take risks. He was of the opinion that a big client would be only interested in duller advertising since he was already conditioned to an approach that had worked in the past.

The best way, he felt, was to select a client more interested in 'identity' than 'image.' "Identity," he thought was what you really are while "image" was what you wanted others to think you are. Obviously, he found it much easier to carry on advertising that dealt with the true identity of the product. He realized that once the client knew that there really was somebody out there who cared, who was interested, he no longer felt quite so driven to advertise his gasoline as though it were rocket fuel or his beer as though it were holy water (Rotzoll 1986).

Here are some of his clients he really cared about and the immensely original and creative work that he did for them.Click on each of the icons below to see their advertising and the role that Howard Gossage played in it. Most of Gossage's work was in the Print media (mainly B& W) and he never really worked for the electronic media except for a few radio spots.

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*All Ads in this section courtsey The Book of Gossage published by The Copy Workshop, Chicago.