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Howard Luck Gossage, the legendary American adman, once stated that:
[...] an idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements - and that the more old elements you have in your head, the more fertile your imagination (Harrison, 2012, p. 82).
Gossage knew whereof he spoke. Although he is less lauded nowadays than the Ogilvys, the Bernbachs, the Burnetts, the Reeveses - the Drapers indeed - of the golden age of Madison Avenue, Gossage is regarded by many advertising aficionados as the most imaginative of the lot ([19] Cracknell, 2011). His quirky campaigns for Qantas airline, Fina petroleum, Eagle shirts, Scientific American and the Whiskey Distillers of Ireland were tours de force of the copywriters' art. In an era when TV ads ruled the roost, bludgeoning consumers with lowest common denominator claims and catchphrases, Gossage's long-form magazine inserts were erudite throwbacks to the pre-TV era. His copy consisted of highest common factor arguments for the goods and services he fronted. Dismissed, indeed, as a dangerous dinosaur in his day, Gossage's conversational style (he treated readers as equals), interactive ethos (he consistently solicited consumer feedback), working practices (he invented the creative hot-shop) and social network-driven approach (he was building brand communities before today's brand community builders were born) now strike us as remarkably prescient (Harrison, 2012).
A lover of history, whose old-fashioned ideas were ahead of their time, Gossage would be very much at home in today's retrospective epoch. We live, as copious commentators have pointed out, in a nostalgia-steeped world. We are caught up in a past times spin cycle - a retromarketing vortex - that is been rotating since the start of the present century and is getting faster and faster with each passing year ([8] Brown, 1999). It is a yester-twister that "proper" historians are hesitant to track, since retro is regarded as degenerate, delinquent and downright disgraceful at times ([33] Lowenthal, 1998). It is a soft-sell spiral, however, where marketing historians should feel at home. Who, after all, is better placed to evaluate today's past times cash-in? Yet we continue to steer clear of the monetization and marketing of yesteryear. This viewpoint argues that it is time to get real about retro. It commences with a...