'Changing the World is the Only Fit Work for a Grown Man'9 July 2012
Joe Jenkins, Friends of the Earth's Director of Communications, pays tribute to the man who arguably kick-started the environmental movement.
Over the past year, we've celebrated the 40th anniversary of Friends of the Earth. It was a great opportunity to recognise some of our many achievements and draw lessons to inform the years ahead. And yet one crucial name was missing from our celebrations. A man without whom Friends of the Earth, and the modern environmental movement, might not exist at all.
That man is Howard Luck Gossage. We now have the chance to correct his omission from our celebrations - thanks to this great new book by Steve Harrison called Changing the world is the only fit work for a grown man.
Gossage was one of the original Mad Men - the wave of young execs in Madison Avenue who revolutionised advertising. He is distinguished from his peers by his distaste for selling cars and airline tickets (despite how very good he was at it). What interested him was making the world a better place. And through partnering with US environmentalist David Brower, they found a way to do just that.
Harrison's book tells his story, a "sixties adman who harnessed the big ideas of his age and set out to reinvent advertising - and then change the world." With Brower, he achieved some amazing things - like saving the Grand Canyon from being dammed, campaigning for the creation of a national park for redwood trees, freeing a Caribbean island and stopping Concorde from being developed in the United States.
What stands out for me is not just what they did - but how they did it. Gossage believed advertising had the ability to create debates - with one ad and a few dollars, he showed how big things could happen, inventing a new format that presented issues in a way that shifted the zeitgeist.
As Gossage said: "The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it's an ad." He believed that people would be interested in the environment, and fight to protect it - if only they could be involved, rather than lectured.
Frustrated by the conservatism and priorities of the 1960s Sierra Club, Brower saw the need for a new type of environmental organisation - to harness these techniques and inspire millions to take action for the environment. Joining forces again with Howard Luck Gossage, Friends of the Earth US was born.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the true story behind today's environmental movement. 40 years on, many of Gossage's ideas remain relevant - and perhaps more necessary than ever before.
Have a read of Changing the world is the only fit work for a grown man, and please share your thoughts. Watch Steve's presentation and tell us what lessons we should be taking today?
© Adworld Press
