Digital Marketing Communication Topic Presentation:
Agency Presentation:
A Conversation with GSD&M’s Tom Hamling
Campaign Project:
Drew Mihans: What is the difference between working for an ad agency in Austin versus an ad agency in LA?
Tom Hamling: I’d have to say, I mean, there’s a few differences… I feel like Los Angeles is a little bit more competitive… the hustle and bustle of LA is kind of something that is definitely true, same with New York… I will say that the difference with GSD&M is when I decided to leave LA and go to look for a different job I still wanted to be able to try to do the best work of my career and GSD&M has that hustle and bustle that LA does but still kind of has a good work/life balance which is nice… advertising as you know, if you let it spin out of control it’ll consume every night/every weekend/every everything… with GSD&M it’s a little easier to balance life and work than sometimes LA where you just keep going, going, going, and going. So I’ll say from a production point-of- view, something that you don’t realize (because I worked in New York before LA) is that in LA, when you’re on production, no matter how much production you’ve got going on you usually go home and sleep in your own bed, which is nice because the extra travel that goes on when you don’t live in LA; for production, can be a lot of travel.
Valentina Ballas: From your experience, where do you see the future of advertising going in the next few years?
TH: That’s a huge question. Everyone always thinks that things are going to change so fast and that its going to be so much different in 2 to 3 years… I think what you always see is more of a gradual change. When digital started everyone was like “it’s only going to be banners” and so everybody worked on banners… clients would say “well, what’s the banner campaign?”… after about 5 or 6 years people realized that the click-through rate on banners was like .026 or something, I don’t know, I’m making that up but it’s ridiculously low.
VB: It’s normally accidental
TH: Yeah, it’s not good.. So people would start to realize “oh my god, maybe banners aren’t necessarily the answer”… so yeah, I think… I hate this word because its such a generic advertising word but content… anything that keeps someone entertained and gets somebody excited about your product… whether that is a 30 second TV commercial fine… if it’s like something you put on YouTube that’s just a web clip that’s cool, but anything that makes your brand seem cool or relevant or entertaining, that to me is going to be the thing that no matter if its 2 years from now or 15 years from now, if you’re not racing through and being entertaining, nobody is going to like you. The future is: keep being entertaining… and that might come in different forms… it might come in traditional forms or it might come in digital forms.. but you better be entertaining or its over.
VB: Do you think broadcast and traditional media still has life in it… is that still an effective way to market a brand?
TH: I do, as long as there is still compelling content on those broadcast channels which I think you can see that there is… so its like you know… sports are always going to be sports, right? I don’t see sports dying anytime soon… so as long as there are sports, there’s going to be the need for a lot more people that are going to be watching stuff not on record. So you think about what shows.. I don’t know, I don’t watch The Walking Dead but some people do.. I’m trying to think of shows that aren’t on HBO but are on major networks… Breaking Bad, for example, is a show that people watched live, they didn’t necessarily tape it and then try to go back and watch it… so as long as you have those shows that people want to consume live, broadcast isn’t going to go anywhere.
DM: With the amount of spoilers online, you have to be careful and have to watch it live so that does create an opportunity
TH: Exactly… I realize there are a lot of people who are going to say its dead.. I don’t think it’s dead, I think it’s always going to be there… as long as people are still watching live TV… and you know, as TV gets better and better I think the need for broadcast is still going to be important.
VB: So going off broadcast, I know that you’re one of the creative people behind the Avocados from Mexico commercials for the Super Bowl, so you’ve done that for three years… and I read that you had 40 or 50 concepts you had to narrow down… so what’s that process like as a creative director?
TH: This is our third year doing the Avocados from Mexico commercial, and then the year before that we had a Radioshack Super Bowl thing… so the process for the Super Bowl is almost the same… you write, write, write, write, so you have to figure out what the strategy is… and then you have to weed down which ones are rising to the top and which ones aren’t… and again, it’s the Super Bowl, right? So, you kind of have to make sure you’re standing out because you know you’re going to be in a sea of people kind of swinging for the fences… that said, the cliché that the Super Bowl has the best advertising of the year I think is not even true… I don’t personally necessarily feel that there’s the best stuff out there… I feel like people fall into the same traditional traps of trying to make explosions and including crazy big celebrities, and they fall into the same areas that a lot of places do… at least with us, we try to avoid that. We try to find something that stands out, but stands out for reasons of being smart, funny, stuff like that… and when we use celebrities we try to use them in a stupid, dumb way that’s a little bit more memorable than just “oh my god, look how much money they have, they were able to afford "_____”, you know? So, the way this year worked in particular is, with not the biggest budget (Avocados definitely doesn’t have the biggest budget for the Super Bowl compared to some of these other agencies), this year we opened it up to everyone in our group to take a shot at it, and then we quickly narrowed down after that to say “these are the teams that still have some stuff alive because these areas are somewhat interesting to us” and then we just narrow it down from there… Kelly Forman and AK Stanford had a lot of really great stuff and then got some CD mentorship from me and my partner and the CD’s below us to bring it to life.
DM: What kind of advice would you provide to a student transitioning into the creative development industry?
TH: Without a doubt, you have to be persistent and have your hand up… it’s different with every generation… when I was a junior, when I would raise my hand and beg (there was no digital yet, I mean it was just starting at the time) for a radio assignment… if you wrote a good enough radio spot, then maybe they would give you a print ad, and if you did a print ad maybe you would get a TV assignment… so that’s the thing that I think is really key with any industry, not just creative, but I see it a lot in creative where people come in early on and they think they’re just going to work on the biggest, baddest stuff, but there’s still a pecking order and you still have to prove yourself… so if you want to stand out in the creative department, when you’re getting into it as a junior… hard work, raising your hand, and always being the person that doesn’t let somebody down, that’s how you’re going to stand out.
VB: What do you think was your favorite or most memorable campaign that you’ve worked on?
TH: When I was a junior?
VB: Yes
TH: Let me think.. there was a famous campaign back in the day called “Got Milk?”… it still kind of kicks around a little bit… our agency had the chocolate milk portion of that which is kind of weird to think about the fact that it was kind of divided up.. but I got lucky enough to work on a couple of spots early on in my career for “Got Chocolate Milk?” which was with a big director named Noah (?)… that was a good eye opening experience for me to kind of get thrown into the fire, presenting to the clients, going to the shoots… figuring it out… those kinds of things were good for me to understand what this industry is all about. There were other TV things before that, there was other print and radio stuff too, but that was the first one where I felt like my career was on the right track.
DM: We noticed that you have done a lot of traveling in your life, and we were curious if there is something you took out of that that has helped you with your career.
TH: Yeah, being open minded and not living in a bubble, I mean you kind of see what a bubble has done for our country lately.. I feel like realizing that everybody is different and everybody comes at something from a different point of view.. travel is a healthy thing for anybody to do to get out of their comfort zone a little bit.. it gets a little bit harder when kids come along so as advice for people who don’t have kids yet is to get it out of your system… if you can find a way to work hard and be the go-to person at work, and take epic trips… then you’re living life right I think. If you’re only living to take those epic trips and you’re slacking at work, then that’s going to bite you, and if you’re only working your ass off and you’re not taking those trips its going to bite you. You kind of have to be the person who works, works, works, works, and then says “you know what, I’m going to New Zealand, or Zimbabwe” or whatever. Get that out of your system because it makes you a better person I think and a better creator for sure to experience new things.
VB: What would you recommend to somebody who wanted to come work in Austin, Texas with you guys?
TH: Stand out. Work. Have a good book… make sure to leave no stone unturned in your book, it’s part of making an impression… and then showing up and working hard and being somebody who asks… agencies are big… GSD&M is kind of big and sometimes you’ll be in a meeting and; this shouldn’t be the case because you should know everybody, but some of the juniors who have impressed me at GSD&M, they’ll leave the room and I’d be like “now who was that again, was that an intern or a new hire?”.. because if you’re going in and you have impressive work… to give you a perfect example… I hadn’t really worked with one of the girls on Avocados who wrote the spot, and right off the bat in the first round they had some great, big, sweeping ideas and then were extremely ready for feedback about how to push them and make them funnier… again, keep your hand up, keep learning… you guys are part of a generation that sort of gets a bad rap, it’s about “me, me, me, me, me”… I don’t think that works necessarily well with the Gen-X, Gen-Y generations a ton, so if you stand up and are willing to learn and are willing to get better and better, then the sky is the limit for your career.
Hamling Heads Hit Super Bowl Ad
After the New England Patriots defeated the Atlanta Falcons in this past February’s Super Bowl, the NFL season had officially come to a close. However; for several companies, the festivities were just beginning. Frequently listed atop the “best of” lists of Super Bowl 51’s commercials was the spot from Irving, Texas business Avocados from Mexico.
The advertisement stars actor and comedian Jon Lovitz for a split second, while focusing the remainder of its minute and a half long run time on a conversation within a secret society about conspiracies and subliminal messaging. While many agencies took the easy route and targeted politics after the recent Presidential election, Avocados decided not to lose focus on their message and their humorous approach was an instant success.
Behind every memorable Super Bowl commercial is a staff of creative directors and employees who are able to bring their thoughts and ideas to fruition. Avocados relied on GSD&M, an Austin, Texas based advertising agency formed in 1971. Avocados from Mexico is one of many recognizable partners attached to the firm, which boasts connections with Southwest Airlines, AT&T, Chipotle, Dodge and the PGA Tour.
Among one of the many young and exuberant employees at GSD&M is Group Creative Director Tom Hamling. Hamling was a large part of GSD&M’s Super Bowl Sunday victory and has led Avocados’ creative team for the American pseudo-holiday for three consecutive years. In an interview with Marist College students Valentina Ballas and Drew Mihans, Hamling said that the key to making an effective Super Bowl advertisement is to “find something that stands out, but stands out because it is smart or funny… you know you’re going to be in a sea of people swinging for the fences”.
There is no perfect algorithm to constructing a creative advertisement, but Hamling believes that many companies often fall into traps “trying to make explosions and including crazy giant celebrities”. Rather than over saturating their advertisements with unrelated, flashy content, they look to insert celebrities; such as Lovitz, in unique ways to gain awareness for their clients’ brand. After all, one of the major points of running advertisements is to promote a product in some way, shape or form that would supplant the cost of the air time. For this past Super Bowl, Fox supposedly charged companies between $5 and $5.5 million dollars just for a thirty second ad.
Despite the recent uptick in sales percentage for avocados nationwide, Avocados from Mexico does not have large enough of a budget to make a spectacle equivalent to a Budweiser or Ford ad. With this in mind, Hamling allowed everyone in his group the opportunity to present their ideas, and they narrowed the field down to just a few interesting ideas to choose from. The pressure to stand out among the pack can be overwhelming, but GSD&M has quietly built a reputation for themselves with their Avocados advertisements that may help them receive the attention they deserve.
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