Just Plain Folks

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Just Plain Jingles

For quite some time I have desired to find an expert in the commercial jingle field who would be willing to share some wisdom with those of us still starting out in this very competitive field. We are very fortunate to have one of the most successful jingle writers and producers in the world as a member of Just Plain Folks. Art Twain has done over 3000 radio and TV commercials and jingles, many which are both instantly recognizable as well as part of the fabric of our everyday life. After some time of discussing how he might offer the benefit of his experience to the group at large, he decided to jump right in with a basic introduction into the world of jingles. Art has also agreed to become our newest Just Plain Folks Mentor!

A Communications graduate of UC Berkley in 1960, Art got his first job as a copywriter in 1964 at Campbell Ewald Advertising agency in San Francisco. He worked for three national agencies from 1964 to 1970, ending up as the head writer on the Levi Strauss account at Honig Cooper and Harrington, the predecessor to Foote Cone Belding. They had never won a national award before his arrival there. Art won 13 national awards the first year and was fortunate to be allowed to produce his own commercials at all three agencies, including writing and arranging the music. Not bad for someone who couldn't read or write a note. In 1969, Art began doing freelance work for a real estate man building his first retail store, named “Pants and Disks.” Art told him he needed a better name and he renamed it “The Gap.” He did all the radio, TV and print advertising for the Gap for several years, including writing the best known jingle of its day, “Fall into the Gap.” Art went to work for himself in 1970, starting Art Twain Creative Services, specializing in sound tracks and sound design for radio and TV. Advertising allowed him to use versatility, which included playing several instruments, composing and arranging music, copywriting and lyricising, voice work, and sound design. Since then, he's worked for a few hundred corporations, including production and consulting in Mexico and Finland. Art has won Clios, Emmy, One Show, International Broadcast Awards, Addys, Andys, AAF, AAW and many more awards for his work. He wrote and produced the 3rd highest scoring financial commercial up to its time for Visa. From C&H Sugar to Levi’s 501 Blues, from Corbett Canyon (with the famous ECHO... Echo... echo...) wines to the major networks, Art has had a varied and enjoyable client and product list that's brought a lot of joy and music into his (and our) life. In addition to writing and producing over 3,000 radio and TV commercials, he has scored films and advised thousands on how to create, produce and sell jingles. He is currently working on a book on his personal secrets of production which I am looking forward to reading.

In 1965, after one year as a copywriter in a San Francisco Ad agency, one of my clients, The Chevrolet Dealers, needed a jingle. I wrote the words and did a bar chart on the song, then sang it for my boss while playing guitar. He loved it and said he’d get it produced in L.A. I told him I not only wanted, but needed to produce it. He said no. I put my job on the line, insisting I do this spot or would have to quit. He thought it was so precious that a guy being paid peanuts would get so passionate about something, he let me produce the spot. The result surprised and thrilled my boss, then the client, then the listeners of the radio stations that ran the spot. Now, 35 years later, I've done over 3,000 radio and TV commercial, tons of jingles. I've won all the major awards that can be won, sold a ton of product, made the big bucks and wallowed in musical fulfillment.

I saw others trying hard to break into the business, but getting nowhere, and my heart went out to them. I helped would-be competitors organize their demo tapes and advised them on how to get a toehold in the business. Some made it. So when Brian approached me to write an article on Jingle-making, I thought I’d take a moment and share my thoughts and knowledge with those of you who'd like to give the biz a whirl. It would take a novel to tell everything I know, which is why I’m writing a book on how to be a hot-stuff producer and rocket past the competition. This’ll be shorter.

First of all, if you watched an ad agency producer go through the hundreds of tapes he gets a month from would-be arrangers and producers, you’d apply for a job as a fry cook at McDonald’s. Some tapes don’t even get played. Just the sight of them makes them candidates for the waste basket. Then the producer listens to the first few notes of the first song and tosses the tape in the trash. Next. A few notes. Next. Hmm. Interesting. Fast forward. Nope. Into the round file. Next. And so on.

Here's what you have to know. It's hard to sell a good jingle idea to an ad agency. They've already gone through a plethora of meetings to establish who their target audience is by age, income and need. They've figured out what the audience wants to hear, what the client's objectives need to be, the slogans and copy points. They may even have gone through extensive and costly testing to make sure their approach will be valid. So your chance of accidentally hooking up with their needs and interesting them with your hot spot is subatomic. Many ad agencies, when receiving an idea from a writer or arranger, will immediately send the tape or idea to their attorneys who will thank you but say they can't even review your idea because it would make them legally liable if they already had an idea like yours in production. Then you might accuse them of plagiarism.

However, if you are trying to get a client interested (not an agency), as in a car dealership or a local concern, you might have a chance. That's a different story. For many wannabe jingle writers, that's a good place to begin to put together a good advertising demo tape.

I'm going to try to give you the short form, here, of what an agency producer looks for in a demo tape, that is sometimes what the client looks for as well. Here are the rules, as I see them.

1. Look professional:

• It's worth the money to print a nice label on a tape. Have your name, phone number and address (Ed. Note: and email address) nicely laid out.

• I wouldn't buy a 90 minute tape on which to put five minutes of material. It looks amateur. Buy a 20-minute tape for your material.

You're going to be judged against the highest standards in the business. No one will care when you explain something is half-finished, or the engineer screwed up the mix “but you get the idea.” They'll want to hear polished, finished-sounding work. Do NOT expect anyone to use their imagination to judge your not-quite-ready-for-prime-time music. At the very least, make sure intonation and rhythm are solid.

• You're at a disadvantage in that you hear wonderful subtle changes going on in the musical pieces you've put back to back. Meanwhile, the agency producer is only hearing general genre, not into the subtleties. Put your best piece first, and a knockout piece second. Make them very different in style and texture—obvious about how different those pieces are. The second piece proves the high quality of the first piece wasn't the only good thing you've done in your life. If you had six things to put on a tape, they would be in this order: Best + near best + weak + Great + weak + knockout. Of your music, you'd have to grade what you have in the terms I've just given you.

• Try to give no more than 20 to 40 seconds to each piece, with a fade at the end of one, starting with full-up on the next. There might be a one-second pause between pieces. If a specific piece really needs 30 or 40 seconds to show terrific changes and ability to wrap up, you can bend the rules. But too many tapes have three long ballads back to back. Or three long rockers back to back. Won't work. No patience among agency producers to listen. They're window shopping and haven't time to feel the material and try it on—unless you snag ‘em.

• Keep the length of the tape short. Maybe five to eight minutes. You can break that rule if you have a richness of material and variety that will hold up.

• In my own demo, I mix ballads, rockers, symphonic pieces, marches, every kind of music into an interesting pot pourri of textures and styles. I'm going after the general window shopper. Some decide to make a living with one style as their forte, like Rap. It can work. For me, it's just too narrow a focus. For example, I start my demo with Washington Apples (Starts very small, gets big in a classic, rock ‘n roll sense), then Levi's 501 Blues (Two guitars, croaky, bluesy voice, small, intimate), then Visa Commercial (six singers, build from small unison with only rhythm section to big harmonies and large marching band with violins) and so on. I've bent the rules because I've been around a while, have a bit of reputation and am providing a music sampler for my potential clients.

Call to find out the name of the agency producer or producers and send your package directly to him/her/them. Follow up and call to see if they've received the package. Ask when you should call again to see if they've listened. Continue to follow up until they ask you not to call. You should always ask them, “Would it be all right if I call to see if it's been played and perhaps get a reaction? When should I do that?” There's an old adage in country music, “The wheel that does the squeaking’ is the one that gets the grease.” So be prepared to stay on top of things. They may eventually listen to your tape just to get rid of you. That's okay.

You can go into the Public Library and look at the Red Book, a book that lists all the ad agencies, their client rosters and the job description and names of their entire staff. You can then use those producer (and sometimes copywriter) names as initial points of communication.

Meanwhile, do the very best demos you can do. Make them the best you can make them. If you get the opportunity to work on some commercials, don't look to get rich on them. Spend whatever you have to spend to get the best possible demos for your reel. It'll come back to you many-fold if you take care of business at the front end.

I've probably left a few thousand things out of this short piece. But here's a warning: I can show you glaring exceptions to every rule I've put down here. But the generalities absolutely hold. Go with the odds. Don't make a rule of the exception. Otherwise you'll buy into propositions like that 100-year old man who, when asked for his secret to old age, said: “I smoke two cigars and drink two pints of Johnny Walker every day.” That approach would kill most of us before forty.

In another article, I’ll tell you how to approach clients directly to build up a demo reel at the least, and perhaps, at the most, make a lucrative business of it. Remember: Anything worth doing has a lot of people trying to do it. Don't be discouraged. We all started somewhere. This can be a heck of a journey.