Once considered an afterthought in the commercialmaking process, music is steadily moving to the top of the agency priority list. Just ask Tom O’Keefe, the executive creative director at Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB) Worldwide, Chicago, who recently appointed James "Stump" Mahoney to the role of director of music at the ad shop. Mahoney has been working at FCB in various roles for the past 15 years, most recently as television producer. Recognizing Mahoney’s background in music and engineering, O’Keefe saw an opportunity to actively make music a more integral part of the production process.
"Now, more than ever, our work deserves a dedicated resource who’s living, breathing, thinking, listening to and suggesting music," says O’Keefe of the newly created position.
O’Keefe’s decision comes at a time when the landscape for producing spot tracks has become increasingly harder to navigate. The last decade has seen a proliferation of copyright infringement cases due to the ever-growing practice of applying popular music to spots. Musicologists are being called in to settle legal disputes involving temp tracks, which are often used to indicate a music direction for a composer. The inherent risk in using temp tracks is that composers are backed up against a creative wall, forced to compose something similar, but not too similar. Measures are being taken to combat the problem by organizations like the Association of Music Producers (AMP), which has been holding a series of seminars since last fall to explain the legal and financial pitfalls of using temp music tracks (see separate story, p. 15). Somewhere in these murky waters, someone at the agency has to stay abreast of the issues and know a thing or two about music.
Enter Mahoney, who has worked on the agency side for his entire career, and played in bands for most of his life. He sees the position of director of music functioning on a couple of different levels. "Having someone who lives and breathes music is helpful and not just from a legal perspective," says Mahoney. "Part of the deal I made with Tom [O’Keefe] is if I’m in this, I want to make sure I’m in very early on in the process. I don’t care if I spend ten hours looking for reference music for an idea that hasn’t even been presented to the client yet and gets killed. It’s important to know and understand the history of the project from the beginning."
At press time, Mahoney had only been at the job for a week, and was already involved in the planning stages for spots for FCB clients such as Kraft, Coors Light, Bally Total Fitness and the Applebee’s chain of restaurants.
Another aspect of the job Mahoney plans to tackle is demystifying the recording process for the younger members of the creative staff. "For as much music that there is in the agency, there are a lot of people, particularly on the junior level, who are not as schooled in discussing music," relates Mahoney. "You have these music composers who are schooled above and beyond anything that I have been, but the fact is that everybody’s got a set of ears, and if you like something, you like it."
Mahoney works side by side with Linda Tinoly, FCB’s special contracts negotiator, in a process where you might say Mahoney is the left brain and Tinoly is the right. "We do work in tandem, but she’s the one who’s initiating many of the calls to interested parties regarding licensing music, and I’m more involved with the creatives directly," he explains.
One argument Mahoney has in favor of licensing pre-existing music is that he feels there’s something more soulful about a song played by a band that is not for commercial purposes. "One of my big concerns in getting a music company to do an original track is that all too often those tracks come off feeling a little stiff," relates Mahoney.
Knowing that licensing music is not always possible, he has longstanding relationships with music houses throughout the country and is always on the hunt for new talent. Another avenue for a fresh sound is the underground rock scene in Chicago. While Mahoney claims many of them are too snobby to do advertising, band members are beginning to recognize that TV commercials are the new radio. "If I think there is someone in town who is perfect for a job," says Mahoney, "I’m going to call them up."
BOOM Hank
Mahoney’s lifelong love affair with music got started when he was a kid—right around the same time he got his nickname "Stump." As the story goes, Mahoney was a "squatty, chunky kid with a flattop." One summer, he crashed the go-kart his father had built him into a tree stump because he got bored while driving it. As he sat laughing at his own recklessness, one of his friends exclaimed, "Hey, he looks like the stump!" The name stuck with him through college and into his job at FCB. He blames the fact that Chicago is such a small place that one person or another from his past would always pop up to pass along the name.
Growing up, Mahoney was always involved in bands of one form or another. He played percussion instruments in grade school and in the high school marching band. Later in high school, Mahoney got into a punk band and finally ended up in a band called Boom Hank, which he has been a part of for the last 15 years.
Mahoney came to FCB in ’88, after graduating from Chicago’s Columbia College. He originally wanted to be an architect and racked up credits in engineering before he changed his mind. At FCB, Mahoney has applied his engineering skills and love of music as an audio engineer, radio producer, associate producer and finally producer. In his new role, he will weigh in on both radio and TV spots where music is concerned.
"He’s the most musical guy I know," said O’Keefe. "He understands commercials, and how music can give them spin."
