The Socrates of San Francisco

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Archive on 4: The Socrates of San Francisco

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, The Socrates of San Francisco

The story of Howard Gossage, a remarkable ad man who tried to change the world.

What if you took a 1960s ad man and gave him a conscience? The remarkable story of Howard Gossage, an advertising pioneer who helped launch the modern environmental movement.

In a former Fire Station in 1960s San Francisco, there's a party going on, involving some of the most celebrated writers, artists, thinkers and musicians of the age. There's John Steinbeck, chatting to architect Buckminster Fuller; Marshall McLuhan is over in the corner telling another of his bad jokes to a young Joan Rivers and Tom Wolfe is talking to fellow author and Merry Prankster, Ken Kesey, who's hanging out at the bar with the Grateful Dead. 

How did all these people come together in one place? The answer lies with a reluctant advertising innovator, an instigator of ideas, an agitator and a mentor - Howard Luck Gossage. The man who came to be known as ‘The Socrates of San Francisco’.

Howard Gossage was an advertising man first and foremost, a preternatural marketing and propaganda genius – but he was so much more. Defiantly independent, he both proved to be one of the industry’s most inventive innovators, astute prophets – and often its greatest critic. 

A vocal thorn in the industry’s side, Howard operated the agency out of the supposed advertising backwater of San Francisco – a continent away from the Mad Men of Madison Avenue. And yet its influence is still felt around the world. 

But upending the world of advertising was never going to be enough for Howard. He always felt that “changing the world is the only fit work for a grown man”. And so, in the mid-1960s, he set about to do just that. Among his many madcap adventures, Howard saved the Grand Canyon from being flooded for profit, tried to start a revolution in the Caribbean, discovered "the Patron-Saint of the Internet", Marshall McLuhan, and helped to create Friends of the Earth. 

In this intriguing tale, celebrated West Coast advertising executive Jeff Goodby, whose own work and ethos has been profoundly influenced by Gossage, explores his life and legacy, which even today exerts its influence on advertising campaigns and agencies all around the world. "He was the inspiration behind the foundation of my agency and taught me about the positive impact advertising could have for society, to do more than just sell, that it can also build communities and drive change".


Presented by Jeff Goodby
Produced by Ashley Pollak and James King
Assistant Producer: Emma Stackhouse
Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar
A TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 4

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