Variously referred to as the 'advertising's most articulate rebel' (Ogilvy 1983), ' a resident gadfly' and 'iconoclastic,' it can be contended that Gossage confers the student of advertising two compelling legacies (Rotzoll 1980).

1. His decidedly unconventional advertising communication philosophy, which has developed a status in Europe (a book of his writings has been published in German), and has achieved enough recognition in the United States to result in his posthumous entry into the Advertising Copywriters Hall of Fame.
2. A body of criticism of advertising structure and practice sweeping from the general (advertising as an institution) to the specific (billboards) that is clearly relevant to contemporary concerns.

We have endeavored to classify his criticisms under the following headings:

[Advertising as an Institution] [Commission System] [Freedom of Press] [Intrusion by Media]

The relevance of Gossage's critique in modern times is under the section [Contemporary Appeal].

Advertising as an Institution

Gossage saw advertising as an industry simply awash with bad practices, and worse, too enmeshed in the existing structure to realize there were problems (Rotzoll, 1980).

In his book Is there any hope for Advertising? Gossage raises the question; Is advertising worth saving?He said, "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; it is thoughtless, boring, and there is simply too much of it" (Rotzoll 1986).

Part of the reason that Gossage loved advertising so much was because he considered it "a lovely Augean Stable to Clean up"(Bendinger 1995). Much of his thoughts on the issue are available in his 1969 Advertising Age article (titled 'Advertising has tremendous (unwanted) economic power and here are things it should do about it.')
He was concerned about these main issues:

• Advertising's 'natural' turf, Gossage thought, was propaganda-but practitioners had increasingly attempted to compensate for lack of real information content by repetition, thus entering the domain of exploitation. This resulted in an addiction to ever-bigger ad budgets with ever diminishing justification as potentially useful propaganda.
• He perceived unwillingness on the part of advertising practitioners to shake free from their environment and set right the flawed business practices. He saw advertising as a system sowing the seeds of its own dysfunction through a loss of central focus as a tool of communication (Rotzoll 1980). He tried to help his colleagues through his various speeches and articles and guide them towards better use of advertising as a communication medium.
• He was saddened by the lack of audience-orientation in most of the advertising messages and considered that to be one of advertising's endemic problems. First off, he contended that they are people, and not 'consumers.' He could not relate to the idea of a mass of consumers, a person on the other hand, was someone to be respected, involved and pleased. He urged his colleagues to re-look the intelligence insulting, tasteless and mind-dulling repetitive advertising they were producing. According to him, "People didn't read advertising per se. They read what interested them. And sometimes it was an ad."(Rotzoll 1986)

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Commission System

Gossage held little hope for the agency system as it was popularly constituted- with the chief culprit clearly being the commission system of agency remuneration. He thought of advertising as the only business where one's income depended upon the amount of money spent rather than the amount that came in (Rotzoll 1980). The fallout from such a system, he felt was:

1. It affected advertising budgets since the agency was constantly in a position of justifying ever-higher budgets.
2. It affected the agency's sense of integrity as it was not being paid directly for what it produces i.e. advertisements.

Predictably, then, Gossage operated on a fee system. His fee was substantially higher than the 15% commission but Gossage believed his work to be superior to what was generally available. He also opened a media placement firm, aptly named Kick-Back Corporation that would place advertising for outside clients and agencies at only 5% of the media quoted rates as opposed to the earlier 15%.

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Freedom of Press

Gossage's favorite illustration of the utter madness of publishing economics was that a newspaper or magazine was the only consumer product, from bubble gum to bras, where the selling prize had no relationship to the actual cost of production (Hinckle 1974). When the publisher first decided to sell his publication for less than it costs to produce it-and the profit coming from advertisers, the reader lost his economic significance and became circulation.
He saw the effective control of press shifting from the public, for whom it presumably exists, to the advertiser who merely uses it to sell his wares. He explained the demise of big city newspapers and magazines, which died 'not because the readers didn't like them, but because the advertisers don't.'(Rotzoll 1986). After the death of New York Times west coast edition he published an ad titled "What good is freedom of the press if there isn't one?" purchasing the space with $1600 of his own money. He noted that a paper he cared about had died and no one had asked him-or any other reader. He believed that if advertisers and publishers could begin to appreciate the relationship between a medium, its audience and its advertisers, the interesting and relevant content of the publication would help reap profits for both the publisher and the advertiser.

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Intrusion by Media

He blamed advertising's diminished effectiveness and tendency towards exploitation partly due to its abuses on television and outdoor advertising. Though his opinions about television are less those of a practitioner and more of an observer, they are consistent with his audience-dominated philosophy and he believed that the airwaves belonged to us (the consumers). He was against sponsorship of entire programs and instead preferred the English system of selling rotating spots in the intervals. Building up elaborate analogy castles (for his famous hot dog analogy and privatization of water supply see Is there any hope for advertising?(Rotzoll 1986)) he persuaded the advertising community to understand the future impact of their actions on emerging media like the television.
But at least, Gossage admitted, television to be a proper medium. A medium, according to him, is one that communicates something else and also communicates advertising. (Rotzoll 1986). Billboards, on the other hand he thought, intrude themselves on audience without their permission. He raged against billboards throughout his career (click on the link to read his1960 Harper's article:How to look at Billboards?) and suggested that they be eliminated from the freeways and instead be put in billboard parks that would be outdoor museums for advertising aficionados.

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Contemporary Appeal

A reasonably dispassionate reading of Gossage's speeches, articles and advertisements reveals much of pressing relevance to contemporary thought and practice. Staying in the trenches, Gossage, with his unquestioned gift of stepping back from his environment, offered us a catalog of critical analyses of the structure and performance of the advertising business that has persisted due to its unrelenting focus on enduring elements in the system (Rotzoll 1980).

We come across the abuse of media in our lives everyday. Advertisers today bemoan soaring budgets while academic journals point towards the concept of diminishing returns working in advertising. There is ample evidence of viewer disenchantment with commercial television and sardonic articles appear on the abuse of the Highway Beautification Act. In the age of Television with fewer people reading newspapers, we observe the demise of urban daily newspapers with circulation in thousands. Once again-did anyone ask the loyal readers, how much they were willing to pay for their favorite newspaper.
Today we hear buzzwords like 'Permission Marketing,' since the consumer is no more accepting the traditional high frequency, intrusive advertising. The choice today is with the consumers who choose to expose themselves only to the messages that are relevant to them and their needs. The emerging field of Account Planning as the 'voice of the consumer' within the agency demonstrates the relevance of Gossage's audience -oriented philosophy, more so in today's environment.

Howard Gossage probed these and other issues of contemporary concern and attempted to raise the consciousness of the advertising community to address them.

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