>
The Dispatch
Building brand fame with Howard Gossage and vegan cannibals
Gossage, brand fame and Oumph!
“The buying of time or space is not the taking out of a hunting license on someone else’s private preserve but is the renting of a stage on which we may perform.” – Howard Luck Gossage
Before your brand takes the stage, ask yourself: WWHLGD?
Howard Luck Gossage — the revered, 1960s San Francisco ad man — hated ads. Okay, he hated most ads; he was quite fond of his own. But he hated the way ads talked at people rather than with them. Most of all, he was sick of dull ads that wasted people’s time.
Gossage loved ads that entertained and engaged the audience. And he loved to put on a show.
Here are two of Gossage’s ads for Qantas Airlines.
“New York Child Wins Kangaroo, Her First!” is a very funny headline. Gossage assumed most people would get the joke, which meant they were in on it.
(Gossage would often only pitch to a CEO, because they’d get his ideas right away, while the sales and marketing teams would be baffled and/or terrified. Oh, how times have changed.)
As marketers, we’re asking for the audience’s attention. What do we give them in return?
Okay, let’s talk about Swedish, plant-based meat.
In Sweden, plant-based meat is a highly competitive category. Three brands hold a majority of the vegan meat market share. Oumph! (amazing name) is not one of them. Back in 2021, they were chugging along. Business was fine. They wanted to do better. 
Apparently, January in particular is a very competitive time for Swedish vegan meat brands.
Most of them lean heavily into something unfortunately called “Veganuary” (yes, that’s vegan January) to capture that “oops, I indulged a bit too much over the holidays, and I should probably make some lifestyle changes” energy that happens after the first of the year.
Oumph! knew they didn’t have the budget to compete head to head with larger brands. They also realized they needed to reach a broader audience — roughly 4% of Swedes are vegan — and light buyers are the best growth opportunity for brands in any category. So they decided to play where their competitors weren’t … Halloween.
What’s scary about plant-based meat? Not much. Sure, Oumph! could have talked about the horrors of the meat packing industry, or the blood-curdling health risks of saturated fat, or the terrifying carbon footprint that comes with raising livestock. But that’s just preaching to the choir, and the choir is very small, and most of them are already singing with those three other brands.
Instead, Oumph! went in a very different direction. Guess what it was. We’ll give you a moment.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Think you know?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Ding! Times up.
Oumph! made plant-based burgers that taste like human meat … and dared the public to try them. 
That’s right, they worked with their chefs and flavor scientists to create a plant-based hamburger that tastes like human. Horrifying? Absolutely. Hilarious? 1000%. Shareable? Yup. Entertaining? Yes, ma’am!
And how did they know what human meat tastes like? They looked at testimonies from actual cannibals and tried to work it out.
Oumph! created a fantastic press kit, which included the video above and sent it off to European media outlets. The goal was to invite people to a food truck event where they could sample these limited edition, plant-based people burgers. The burgers were also available in stores across the EU just in time for Halloween.
Did it work? Well, yes. Otherwise we wouldn’t be talking about it.
The campaign reached 1.5 million on social media alone. It was featured in pretty much every Swedish media outlet, reaching another 2.2 million people for free. The story also made its way to The Rakyat Post in Malaysia, The New York Post, Business Insider, something called The Vegconomist, the South China Morning Post and the SRH Empirical Marketing Dispatch, among many others. Sales increased by 36% and the brand grew by 19%. 
What does this mean for you?
We hear all the time, “Oh, our brand can’t do that.” And that’s true. Your brand cannot make and serve plant-based human meat burgers. Oumph! already did it.
You can, however, look at what your competitors are doing and go a wildly different way. You can take bigger, smarter swings. And when your brand takes the stage, you can entertain and engage.
And you know what? It doesn’t have to be funny. Funny works, but if your brand isn’t funny, don’t be funny. There are other core emotions to tap into, other ways to get attention. It doesn’t have to be expensive — good ideas generally don’t cost extra, but they work a lot harder. And it doesn’t have to be a stunt. But you can entertain people. We can help.
Here’s one more ad from Gossage. 
He wrote this for Fina, a gas station chain. Back in the 1960s, additives were having a moment — gasoline additives, engine additives. The only part of the car that didn’t seem to have an additive was the tires. So Gossage invented pink air. Real? No. Ridiculous? Yep. Fun and engaging? Of course. Experiential? That, too.
If Gossage were alive today, he’d be very old, but he’d probably agree that audiences don’t need to see more ads. They need better ones.
We’ll see you next time.
Sources!
BBC Radio 4 – Archive on 4, The Socrates of San Francisco
Fina “Pink Air” Campaign (1961-1963) by Howard Gossage » Swipe File Archive »
Advertising — Howard Luck Gossage
Oumph!_ Human meat plant-based burger _ WARC.pdf (on our GoogleDrive)