John Singleton, Advertising & Newspaper News, July 9, 1971, p. 4.

Protesting is in.

People are standing up saying anything that comes into their tiny heads.

People are sitting down writing things on bits of paper and marching up and down with their tiny minds held high on skinny sticks.

“Advertising is going to corrupt the morals of the otherwise virgin human race.”

“A tour of some remote football players is going to ruin the otherwise perfect relationships between all races in all countries.”

What a load of crap.

But, like all things, protesting serves a purpose. It makes us all think and for that we are in the debt of all the protesters of all the mickey mouse causes in all this disneyland world.

Howard Luck Gossage used to think about a lot of things, amongst them advertising.

“What sort of minds are they that run this world?” Howard Luck Gossage asked himself one day.

“What sort of thinking is going on in those un-thinking heads?”

“Teleological thinking is going on,” John Steinbeck said one day to Howard Luck Gossage, and proceeded to write about it in a chapter called “Easter Sunday” in a book called The Log From the Sea of Cortez.

The Steinbeck-Gossage, Gossage-Steinbeck, teleological theory has particular relevance to many facets of marketing and should be required reading for all the reach and frequenters and head-counters and statisticians and all other sundry debtors.

Teleological thinking means, roughly looking at things as though they have a discoverable cause in the past; a reason for existing now; and an ultimate purpose in the future.

Teleological thinkers think things should be a certain way and if they aren’t, why not? Fix it so it is the way it is supposed to be. Now.

This is, in fact, the customary way of looking at things.

Babies cry.

Beards protest.

Marketers make speeches.

Teleological thinkers all.

Eminently sensible thinkers. Idiots.

We see them at work every day. A coffee made especially for people who drink coffee white.

Look to the left, look to the right, or get hit by a truck.

Warning: cigarette smoking could be injurious to your health.

Masturbation turns you blind.

Think teleologically. Go broke.

Gossage gives an irresistible example example which I would like to share with you.

It concerns dogs pissing on telegraph poles. The words are his not mine; the example is his, not mine. I wish they were both mine.

Teleological thinkers get very concerned about very important things like dogs pissing on telegraph poles.

The solution to the teleological thinker is crystal clear.

Either:

  1. stop dogs pissing; or
  2. remove telegraph poles. Or
  3. spend a great whack to find out why dogs piss on telegraph poles and leave it at that.

The non-teleological thinker looks at it another way. Dogs do piss on telegraph poles. It is a fact, it was a fact, it will be a fact.

Chickens cross the road. Fact.

Dogs piss on poles. Fact.

Non-teleological thought. An example: Plant trees for the dogs to piss on.

Dogs will always be dogs but telegraph poles were once trees. Fact.

The dogs are happy. The trees are happy. The people are happy. The city is happy. The birds built a nest. The dogs piss. Nature is what nature is.

And like so often Howard Luck Gossage just about said it all. It is the problem with life and with marketing in particular: too many people are worrying about the dogs pissing on the poles.

Instead of planting trees.