DOING THE BUSINESS

Big George's Guide To Commercial Success: Working In Advertising

Published in SOS February 2000
Printer-friendly version

Music Business

This month, Big George looks at learning to roll with the difficulties of working in advertising, and the art of when (and when not) to hold your tongue.

This column is all about trying to give you an edge, and helping to stop you doing something stupid which you'll regret for the rest of your career. Sadly, I'm not really one to talk -- without doubt, the dumbest thing I've ever done was make myself unemployable in the advertising industry (more on this in a minute). This was a mental thing to do, as advertising pays some of the best money you can find, and the budget for recording will cover just about any playing ensemble a composer could wish for. What a shame the creative process is given so little room to manoeuvre.

The chances of you getting into this side of the business is incredibly small, but that shouldn't stop you having a go. First, send your best work on CD to every agency on the planet and wait for a reply. It won't come, so keep sending different department heads the same CD, remembering to ring up a couple of days after its arrival. If you do get a reply, it'll be patronising to the extreme. But persevere and use all your super-powers of detection to find out where development executives go drinking (it'll be the ponciest place in town) then go and try to forge some kind of relationship with them. This will take you to the next stage, a meeting.

It could be an invite to a 'strategic brainstorming pow-wow', or a 'breakfast get-together', or an 'after-hours tête-á-tête', or any number of pretentious-sounding meetings. Don't panic though, as it'll get re-assigned at the last moment; you getting jerked around is all part of their game.

When (or more likely 'if') you do get a job, the money on offer may well seem grotesquely high (but them's the kind of jobs we like). Mind you, they won't half be picky about what they want and how to achieve it. Unreasonable requests for changes without a valid reason or a sensible suggestion to a better approach are just the start, as my stories show (I said we'd come back to them).

It was like this: I was involved in making a jingle. Everything was going fine, even the usual plethora of (supposedly) necessary brainstorming meetings with dozens of ad agency executives, the client, the director and various departmental representatives, all of whom are on vastly inflated salaries but saying nothing of any worth.

Eventually, the day of the jingle recording came, and the session started well. Then the production strategist flounced in, buttonholed me and proceeded to tell me at length about other sessions he'd managed to hold up with his incoherent babbling. I was ignoring him quite successfully -- until he started to explain the demographic profile of the product's target customer.

As a high street and out-of-town food seller, the jingle client was aiming its adverts at single mothers who live in poverty. They were promoting cheap, rubbish food with the image of a large happy family gathered round a log fire. For some reason I asked the 'production strategist' whether he didn't think that was totally immoral (how stupid of me to think in terms of morality whilst taking the devil's shilling). We got into a bit of a row, which escalated fairly rapidly into me telling him to do something anatomically impossible with his demographic profile.

The outcome was that he sacked me on the spot, mid-way through the session. Of course, someone else earned a tidy amount composing 28 seconds of Christmas jingle cliché -- but no amount of money can buy the satisfaction of giving an earful to someone whose arse you've had to kiss for far too long. Just don't do it too often.

Sadly, I did it too often. Shortly after that, I had my (to date) last encounter with the wonderful world of advertising, where I walked out of the meeting. Why? Quite simply because the chief executive was too out of his self-important brain on cocaine, and I couldn't take any more of his blabbering. They haven't called me since. As I've said before, if there was drug-testing across the entire music industry, the people who actually create the product wouldn't have to put up with know-nothing wannabes misdirecting them.

Sour Grapes? Me? Without a doubt -- but if there's a moral to this, it's that you may have to work for idiots, and they may pay well; but never let them realise you've rumbled that they're idiots, because there's always another composer waiting for the work.

Further Information
If you want more tips on how to get into the advertising industry, don't bother to ask me! Family connections are the best route in; then there's blackmail, lucky breaks, going to the right health club (or similar expensive facility) and sheer idiotic persistence. They're all fair game in this business. So if you see a chance, take it. And if you can't see it, make it happen, and if you can't make it happen -- that's your hard luck.