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The Ninja JingleWarrior

Professionally, I was luckier than most. I stumbled into a good job as a copywriter/producer for a national advertising agency in 1964. I managed to talk them into letting me do jingle work—lyrics, music composition and arrangement, recording—and learned studio production while making a salary. By 1970 I started my own creative business, concentrating mostly on music work. Now, 3,000 commercials and a lot of awards later, I’ve amassed a wealth of knowledge and ideas about the elusive advertising music business and how to succeed in it.

In the spirit of sharing what I know and think, here are my thoughts on how to get a toe hold in the business, then scale the mountain.

Mark Twain was once asked what he charged to give a two hour speech. “Five hundred dollars,” he answered.

“Well, then what would you charge for a one hour speech?” the client came back, looking to save money.

“I don’t understand. How can you charge twice as much money for a speech that’s half as long?” the confused client bemoaned.

I’m going to try to boil down what I know into a succinct body of information that might help move you along in your career, as it applies to doing jingle work. I’m going to take you through a stepping-stone approach to building a business. You’ll start small and cheap and build it up until you’re ready to enter the big arena. Here goes:

I’ve always wondered: “What if I parachuted into an unknown town and had to try to build up a jingle business there. How would I do that? I realized the same elements that apply to my fantasy problem also apply to what most wannabes face in any city.

The dilemma: I don’t know a soul. I don’t know where the studios are, where the musicians are. I don’t know singers or players. I’m short on cash and experience and don’t have a demo reel.

Okay, that’s my worst case scenario. Now, here’s my best case answer. (By the way, this has worked.)

Start familiarizing yourself with the terrain. Get out the phone book and look up ad agencies and recording studios. Make a database you can easily refer to. Make some phone calls to the ad agencies and studios to ask who does production in town, so you can call them and ask for references on players and studios. Make a database on the players. In fact, make a data base on everything. Call players and solicit tapes, so you can figure out who you can use if you pick up some business. By the way, other producers are usually happy to share their players with you. It’s to their advantage to keep their good people working so they don’t leave town to find better opportunities.

A good demo is the coin of the realm. Grab anything you’ve ever done and put together a demo of the tightest, most interesting material, every cut being no more than 20 or 30 seconds and nicely edited together. The material should be varied, showing different styles, and not exceeding five to eight minutes. A client will “window shop’ your demo if he likes the first cut. Then he’ll say, “I like something like your fifth cut for my spot.” If you don’t have anything recorded, you’ve got to find a way to do a demo. You may have to get a job, save money, then find an affordable studio and make a demo there. Later in this article I make a suggestion on how to make a demo for no money.

Well-done labels, letterhead, business cards and other business related graphic material will go a long way to win trust, make you look “together” and get you the gig.

Your chances of getting work with an ad agency are small, though possible. They already have a stable of producers. So go where your skills might allow you to not only do spots, but build great demos that can go on your demo reel. I’d hit car dealerships, furniture businesses and anyone that might want to advertise, but are small potatoes. Make them an offer they can’t refuse—even if you do the spot for free, having the client pick up the production and talent costs. You need really good demos to build a reel on and if you can use client money to do them, so much the better.

Another good source for work are radio stations. Most radio stations typically provide commercial concept and production for their clients at an extra cost, to get them on the air. Stations make their main money from selling air time, not producing commercials. Tell them you’re terrific and will prove it by doing your first spot free, but they’ll have to provide the production facilities and pay the talent costs. They get a free spot, you get a demo. What do they have to lose?

WARNING: The demo is your future, your calling card. Make it the best it can be. It’s false economy to economize on production value to make a few bucks. For example, if you can use real violins instead of synthesized strings, do it. It’ll be impressive.

Make a regular round of phone calls to potential clients. You’re regularity might be annoying to some. Tough turkey. They weren’t going to hire you anyway. Others will have thought over your willingness to produce a winner for them. (Always be positive about what you can do.) You’ll not only catch them in a moment of weakness one day, but they’ll have a strong subconscious feeling that you’re reliable because you call when you say you’re going to call. Be on time. In fact, be five minutes early. If you tell them a time you’re going to call them, call right on time. They need to know they can depend on you.

You’re going to take the demo you’ve built, and go hunting for bigger game now. You’ll approach smaller ad agencies for business. You’ll not only send tapes to the producers, you’ll send tapes to the copywriters because they have a say in production too. You might even call some of them up and offer to give them a first time freebee to understand the skills you have. That way they might use you for a demo to pitch a client or get one of their ideas across where they might not have taken a chance if it cost money. By making a “first time discount” with the client, you keep the door open to making money on the second job. But you really need that first job to break the ice. The “first time discount” also helps to keep you from being seen as the “cheap alternative.” You want to eventually make money in this business and don’t what to be “the cheap one.” You can do this same approach on the lower level clients as well. Some of my “first time freebee” clients have ended up paying me tens of thousands over the years.

Listen to the radio and pay attention to what categories of business are advertising at lower and mid-level. You can usually tell the cheaper advertisers by their commercials. Contact either the same people doing lousy commercials or others in that same category of product that you don’t hear being advertised. Don’t worry about be rejected. If you worry about that, then better get another business. Anything worth doing has a lot of rejection at the front end. One of the latest boons to producers are the dot coms, all those companies with internet sites. Go for it. Call those guys up.

If you’re not good at lyrics or copywriting, find someone who can do that. Call agencies to see who wants to work free lance with you to make extra money. Same thing the other way around. If you’re great at lyrics or copy and mediocre at music, find a music person to work with. Ask studios or agencies for those kinds of people.

As your demo builds up with actual pieces you’ve done for airplay, you gain in stature in the eyes of prospective clients. Keep replacing the weaker samples with stronger ones. If you do sample or real commercials, put the name of the product on the label. It’s more impressive that way. Mix the sample spots with real spots. Who’s to know you didn’t really do the big time commercials you’ve put on your reel? Give the name of the product, the name of the spot itself, to length of time and medium. Here’s how it should read:

If you only have music pieces and no commercials, then go for it. Use that material to show your skills. Keep in mind though, that the closer you are to what the client needs, the better your chance of finding work.

Keep it short, make it your best work. If you have six pieces, here’s the order:

2. Very strong piece to show the first pieces wasn’t the only good thing you’ve ever done

You can advertise in the classifieds to find just about anything you might need or want to sell. You can advertise to find a recording studio that would like to work in cooperation to make money in the jingle business. Even without experience, you’ll get interested studios calling you, see you as a possibility to increase their business. You may be able to strike a deal with them to either record or edit your demo in trade for doing your production in their facility. You can advertise for any service needed or even for any service you want to give. I’ve had extraordinary results from ads I’ve placed for various things.

As the demo builds up and your business makes some money, keep upgrading the demo, the letterhead and methodology of your business.