The most unusual, unstructured job in the advertising agency business may very well belong to the music producers. They advise and consult with agency creatives and clients on issues of music. They act as liaisons between the agency and outside composers and performers. They often negotiate rights payments with composers, performers and publishers of existing music. They keep the agency and its clients away from dangerous areas of copyright infringement. And, bottom line, they do whatever is needed to get the music and sound design of a commercial right.
"A good agency music producer is an asset to a job, a constructive and positive partner in the music-making process," says Lyle Greenfield, president/creative director of Bang Music, New York, and president of the Association of Music Producers (AMP).
An agency with its own music producer, continues Greenfield, has a leg up on the process because it has someone thinking about a spot’s music from the beginning. "In situations where there is no agency music producer, the people involved in the production of the spot are thinking about other things first—casting, where to shoot it, etc.," Greenfield points out.
Peter Greco, senior partner/executive music producer at Young & Rubicam (Y&R), New York, says music producers have generally been considered a luxury at agencies, but that music houses share Greenfield’s opinion almost unanimously. "[An agency music producer’s] primary function is as a liaison between the agency and the musicians," Greco explains. "We can speak both languages. More than anything, we save [musicians and music companies] a lot of time and effort. We get there faster because we can articulate better what the needs of the agency and clients are and put it in music terms so that the musicians can give us more specifically what we’re looking for, rather than trying to guess."
Or, as Y&R music producer Josh Rabinowitz put it in a prepared description of what he does: "My job is to subjectively and fiscally facilitate the needs of a somewhat combative cast of characters and egos in the music and sound process of advertising—this cast includes producers, copywriters, art directors, creative directors, editors, directors, the musical source (i.e., musicians, composers, sound designers, singers, managers, agents, publishers, record producers, engineers, record labels, lawyers, etc.) and especially the corporate clients—while continually trying to maintain a level of quality, sincerity, creativity, marketability and political correctness."
"We really add value to the process while policing a whole bunch of different things," adds Rabinowitz.
Like Y&R, BBDO New York is a big agency noted for its broadcast work, and it also has a music department comprising several producers. "We’re a heavily production-driven agency doing complex productions, and hand in hand with that go very complex music and sound productions," explains Rani Vaz, BBDO’s senior VP/director of music and radio production. "We’re sort of a utility team—special services people you send in to solve your music and sound problems. Whatever comes out of a creative director’s imagination, whether it be singing Munchkins or the sound of someone digging out of prison with a small metal spoon, we try our best to solve that."
Loren Parkins, executive producer in BBDO’s music department, says the job requires one to be familiar with all styles of music. "You never know what’s going to come onto your desk next," he notes. "It could be classical, a piece of world music, a funk band—anything. We’re a great resource. We’re able to translate ideas from creatives to music houses, and make those ideas come to life."
Mike Boris, VP/executive music producer at Bates USA, New York, calls the job "a real managing-of-personalities kind of position." He sees his job as one that is rooted in production, but is also part of a collaborative process with the creatives. "At the inception of a board or an idea, somebody wants a piece of music to drive it or to present it to a client with," he relates. "We’re there to offer suggestions, and to keep it legal, safe and logistical from the get-go. We’re able to focus one hundred percent on this one specific part of the production. We’re able to enhance other people’s creativity by bringing good people to the project, and keeping the supplier base fresh and open. The bottom line is, we make the creative better and we save people’s time by being able to take all this information and process it and bring it to fruition."
Although the agency music producer’s goal is to keep the creatives happy about a spot’s music, Eric Korte, VP/music director at Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, says he sometimes has to be "the bad guy" and steer them away from problems. "We have to say, ‘What you’re asking for, the client’s never going to pay for.’ We can raise a red flag. I often caution people, ‘Are you sure you want to present this to the client with this piece of music that they can’t have and will never be able to afford? Once you do that, if they love it, they’re always going to be disappointed in anything else they hear.’ That’s part of our responsibility and they listen to us. I’ve been able to avoid ninety-nine percent of those situations."
Musically Inclined
The unusual nature of their jobs requires agency music producers to possess a wide range of talents, but an obvious one is a thorough knowledge of music in a wide range of styles and genres, from classical to hip-hop. Many are musicians, some are composers, some have studio backgrounds, but all are deeply steeped in music. Greco plays guitar and spent some years on the music house side of the business, including a stint as a partner with composer/ musician Michael Mainieri in a now closed firm called Centerfield. Vaz has played violin with The Joffrey Ballet and the Long Island Philharmonic, and is currently in both a classical piano trio and a rock band. Parkins graduated from the Berklee College of Music, Boston, with a degree in music composition, and plays bass. Rabinowitz played trombone in venues as varied as the London Underground and studio recording sessions, and currently heads up a funk and soul band called The Second Step. Boris was a drummer and recording engineer before entering advertising, and Korte studied music in college and worked as an engineer on record sessions with Paul Simon and others.
Agency music producers say they like their jobs because they get to keep one foot in production and the other in the creative side of the business, and because no two spots are the same. Vaz of BBDO has worked on such demanding spots as those in Pepsi-Cola’s "Joy of Cola" campaign, which currently features pop star Britney Spears—but says the job closest to her heart was "Open Doors," a Texaco spot promoting the importance of music education in children’s lives. Directed by Joe Pytka of Venice, Calif.-based PYTKA, the spot follows a young boy looking for a place in his busy apartment to practice the violin, and eventually finding it on the roof of his building. The arrangement was done by David Horowitz and Ted Kuhn of David Horowitz Music Associates (DHMA), New York.
"The piece of music [the boy] plays is Bach’s ‘Concerto for Two Violins,’ which I’ve performed a lot over the years," explains Vaz. "I did everything from playing on the original demo with the folks down at DHMA, to setting up the orchestra on the stage at the shoot, to helping to teach the main character the music."
The actor was a beginning violin student, and Vaz says he had to jump ahead four years in training to play the part. "The kid could only play on one string and I spent every minute before the shoot and during breaks going over all the bowing and fingering, praying he would be able to learn it," Vaz relates. "It was important for me that the spot look authentic. He didn’t have to play it all that well, but he had to play it."
Vaz got involved right after storyboarding and participated in casting the part. "We were trying to find a kid we actually thought could play but also looked right for the role. Casting was done over the whole U.S., and took quite a few weeks. I was the one who was with him to make sure he could play it. It was a minor miracle."
Rabinowitz says his current project for Dr Pepper—a three-spot package called "Be You," directed by Paul Hunter of bicoastal HSI Productions—is some of the most satisfying work he has been involved with at Y&R. The three commercials feature current artists paying tribute to great musical pioneers. In the rock genre, Mark McGrath of the group Sugar Ray pays homage to Buddy Holly. Alternative hip-hop group Black Eyed Peas honor Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, and Latina singer Thalia pays homage to Tito Puente.
"These artists have allegiances to their record producers," notes Rabinowitz. "We came up with original lyrics and music composed by Joey Levine of [New York-based] Crushing Music, and we asked the artists and their producers to make it happen. I worked intimately with the producers and some of the artists. I felt this was a great way for me to flex my muscles—creatively, musically—and all that. The music house had done some demos, which the record producers and I sweetened and rearranged."
In Tune
Boris cites a spot in the works now for Hyundai, out of the Los Angeles office of Bates, for which he negotiated rights to the old Jethro Tull song "Thick as a Brick." "We weren’t using the line ‘thick as a brick,’ but instrumentally it worked really well for the spot. After realizing that editing it was going to be hard, and that it wouldn’t be very cost effective to buy the master, I was able to get [Jethro Tull front man] Ian Anderson himself to re-score the song. It sounded just like the original because Anderson played most of the instruments himself originally."
BBDO’s Parkins cites Mountain Dew’s "Duo" as being an ad that required considerable input from the music unit to get just right. "The music track took some pretty involved description and explanation of the compositional structure, instrumentation and harmonic and melodic progressions," he says. The spot, directed by Tarsem of bicoastal/international @radical.media, features highly stylized martial arts choreography. "The music, by Stewart Copeland of Groove Addicts, Los Angeles, had to stay up with the level of the look of the film and feel of it. It required more involvement on my part to make it the way we wanted it. My ability to explain in music terms contributed to the final result."
And Korte tells the story of a couple of Kodak spots for single-use cameras: "Tribes" and "Goth," directed by Errol Morris of @radical.media. The jobs illustrate how different the music needs can be for two spots in the same campaign. "The two ads were different and challenging," notes Korte. "[For] ‘Goth,’ we licensed a lesser-known Bobby Darin song. For ‘Tribes,’ we licensed the publishing rights to the old War tune ‘Why Can’t We Be Friends?’ We did our own arrangement, which is completely unlike any other arrangement that’s been done of it. It’s very different from the original version."
"Why Can’t We Be Friends?" was arranged at Duotone Audio Group, New York. "We had to explore a lot of different ways of treating the song," Korte recalls. "The creatives had different opinions among themselves, which is normal. We did at least eight very different arrangements of the song. This started while they were shooting the commercial."
For "Tribes," says Korte, the creatives were originally looking for a well-known song, with their sights set at first on "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music. "That turned out to be cost prohibitive," Korte reports. "The Darin song, ‘Beautiful Things,’ was definitely not familiar to many people. It was originally written for the old Dr. Doolittle movie with Rex Harrison. Some of us immediately fell in love with it. Others weren’t so sure to begin with, but it works really well in the commercial.
"The challenge is building consensus, getting people to all agree, to see the light," continues Korte. Kodak has been sharing with the agency the e-mail that the spots have generated. "Kids are saying they love the music and are asking where they can buy the records," he says. "That’s very rewarding, very satisfying for us. We did a good enough job on the War song to make them think it’s off some cool new album."
