Marketing automation without computers.
Howard Luck Gossage was an American advertising innovator in the 1950s and ‘60s.
Gossage was an inquisitive soul. But he was also an industry disruptor.
Cybernetics #
One of the subjects he looked into was cybernetics and how cybernetic theory could be implemented into advertising.
Cybernetics is the science of communication and automatic control systems in both machines and living things.
A spin off from the science was the term “being in the loop,” for communication, meaning playing an active role in society by remaining sensitive to the consequence of one’s actions and the responses of others.
Norbert Wiener, the brains behind cybernetics, developed an information theory. To him, communication was a process of interaction. I send something out to you, you in turn send something back to me, your response in turn triggers another communication and we go forward together, doing things together.
Where we are today #
Isn’t this where we are now via digital marketing, email, messaging and social media?
Now, Gossage didn’t have access to computers to help him in his mission. It seemed all computing capacity back in the day was being used for more important things, like measuring the trajectory of missiles in flight!
What he did do, though, was promote the idea of one advert at a time. Traditionally, advertising is planned one year at a time, for planning and budgetary reasons.
As Gossage told Advertising Age in March 1959, “If you say something as interestingly as you can, you can them expect the other party to make a response. So the next time run a new ad and develop the dialogue. It makes the conversation much more interesting. And rewarding.”
It all sounds very simple but what Gossage was describing was an approach to advertising that no one else was to attempt for another 35 years.
The underlying theory behind marketing communication doesn’t change, just the tools.
Howard Luck Gossage: “Changing the world is the only fit work for a grown man or woman.”
Thank you for reading.
