Dear Playwrights and Theatre Folk,
If you’re here it’s likely because you are interested in finding alternative income streams to support yourself as the theater industry goes through what it’s going through. I’ve had a foot in theater and a foot in advertising for years, so maybe I can be a bridge of information for you. Just please don’t leave the world of theater completely. Make money to support yourself, explore new paths, enjoy getting paid a livable salary to use your creativity, but don’t make me live with the guilt of knowing I pushed you away from an art form that needs you now, more than ever. Please come home to visit.
“Now, more than ever.”
This is the kind of shit you’ll have to put up with in advertising. You are not a lone genius and there is no guild to protect your rights to maintain control of your work. Sometimes a toxic client will want to do what every other brand is doing, because rocking the boat could mean getting fired and playing it safe means they keep their job for another month. Look at all those commercials on TV, all those emails from your favorite theater companies, all saying “in these times” and “now, more than ever.” Writing for hire often means taking a breath and visualizing direct deposits.
However, sometimes copywriting is good writing. Look at the smart copy The Economist is famous for. Or these examples. Admit it, you like some commercials, too, even if they are propaganda tools to uphold capitalism. The way people thought about Apple completely changed when they saw this commercial. If you’re my age you’ve said “Wassup!” in normal conversation (and maybe still do). If you are under the age of 70 and ever bought Old Spice, it has nothing to do with the product and everything to do with this commercial that changed their brand (but hasn’t aged well). Or my personal favorite, the holiday ads in the UK that can make you cry about Christmas gifts or even World War I. The writing you do for a brand can get more views, more headlines, and more understanding from your family about what you actually do. Sometimes it can even change the world.
But sometimes marketing is really bad. Like “Carousel with a new book by Neil LaBute” bad. With such large teams working on these million dollar projects, somehow we still got racism solved by soda, insurance sold by a dead child, and suicide failure due to clean emissions. In my opinion, most bad work is a result of the nature of the business: corporate cultures of mediocrity, creative by committee, unwillingness to speak truth to power when it could cost you a job. But your life doesn’t have to be spent letting your soul slowly fade out like a spotlight at the end of “Send in the Clowns.”
“Jason, I’m getting poorer by the paragraph.”
OK, let’s get to the point. The world sucks and we need to make a living. If you don’t need to make a living and have a trust fund to help you, you need to get the fuck out of this Google doc. Now, more than ever.
Decide what you want. There are exceptions to what I’m going to say, but the economy is going down faster than Elphaba at intermission, so let’s make some generalizations. If you want to work on big national campaigns and make TV commercials, the money is really good but it’s going to be hard to find time for your art. The hours are long. It’s competitive. Most of the “creatives” actually wanted to go to ad school, gain a masters in advertising, and they are passionate about what they do. While you took bathroom breaks during the Tonys whenever the head of the American Theatre Wing walked out, your competition was holding it until the Super Bowl commercials were over. Yeah, I don’t get it either. If you’re looking to put your writing to work for a paycheck, probably freelance, and hopefully leaving you some time to keep working on your art, then I recommend you consider forgetting about commercials and concentrate more on copywriting social posts, email blasts, websites, brochures, etc. You’ll probably need this kind of work for your portfolio anyway before an ad agency would hire you. And don’t forget, you might be able to pick up work as a proofreader, especially if you noticed how I’ve used both “theatre” and “theater” in this letter.
How do I get the work? You need a website that shows your portfolio of copywriting. Stop yelling, I know that you need to have work to show work. If every Morgan and Emily coming out of a BFA can claim Hermia is a “Lead Role” then you can create some fake ads. Seriously, it’s expected, just label them with a small font as “spec work.” That website should eventually help you get a small brand to hire you for some copywriting they need done. Then you have real work in your portfolio.
Why should I trust you? If you can’t trust someone who makes money convincing others that six blades are better than three, who can you trust? You need to do some reading on your own. I’m already on page three here and nobody gave me a book deal, so put in the work. The good news is I’ve sifted through the immense pile of bullshit books and picked the essentials. Start with Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. Then move on to Ogilvy on Advertising which is old and about the Mad Men era but will give you the lay of ad land. Then, there are many books on actual copywriting techniques like this and this. Then just start building a portfolio of examples, even just 3-5 is enough to start looking for clients. Look at how other copywriters do portfolios at Modern Copywriter. You’ll find a lot of inventive ways to make your website as interesting as your work, and you’ll probably be inspired to change your playwriting site as well. Just please don’t put in your bio jokes about “writing about myself in third person” because you will find that joke on 44.3% of About pages.
If you want to stay in the loop on the best work in the industry, sign up to Ad Age’s Creativity newsletter. Scroll to the bottom and you can input your email. You only get limited articles each month before you hit a paywall, but even seeing the summaries gives you an idea of what’s currently considered the best work in the industry. This is usually big conceptual campaigns from big agencies, so it’s rare to see a purely copywriting based idea.
“This sounds like a lot of work.”
Yeah, it is. My career started in theater, also. I was a stage manager, then a company manager, then spent some time at Live Nation, moved to London and worked as a producer/manager on West End shows and Punchdrunk immersive theater and musicals in pubs and anything else I could do. But I didn’t have any financial safety net other than the privilege that comes from being a white man in America and the UK. Big musicals paid the bills, but the snobby little musicals I enjoyed working on were becoming fewer. My step into advertising really started when I moved back to New York City. I threw together a website with some marketing work I did on shows and after a lot of cold emails and dreadful networking events, someone at an events agency thought my theater work would come in useful. Then I worked on a Google event. Then I got to say I worked with Google as a client, which some people are impressed by. Then a small digital agency in Brooklyn returned a cold email and asked me to come in and help Google Play live tweet the Oscars. Then they asked me to stick around and help them pitch for some new business. Then I stuck around there for two years. It was hard, but I also had never made that much money in my life.
WARNING: take the money, get something back from your capitalist masters, but please don’t delete your theater work from your Twitter bio.
Balancing Art & Money. Smarter people than me are already talking about the difficulties of being an artist, working in theatre, when you aren’t rich. I feel like I’m learning more and more how even “successful” artists need day jobs. It’s reassuring. I want to share some things related to this that have helped me. Jerry Saltz did a famous essay called 33 Rules for Being an Artist. It’s worth a full read for artists of any medium, but don’t miss Lesson 21. The journalist who wrote the article McMillions is based on, Jeff Maysh, did a Longreads podcast where he talks about finally admitting to having a day job, even after his million dollar film deal, and why it gives him freedom to work on what he wants. I may not know you personally, dear reader, but I hope advertising work helps you to buy yourself a little more time to write and ponder about reshaping a theatre industry. Maybe an industry where trust funders have to write Google docs about how to break into an industry now taken over by the working classes.
Warmly,
Jason Ferguson
PS Please consider sharing this with others and feel free to follow me on Twitter at @jasonpferguson. If your new advertising work finds you comfortable enough to give back to the theater community, please consider a donation to Clubbed Thumb, a theater company I’m proud to be part of as a board member.
PPS Send me any other questions via Twitter and I’ll try to keep updating this letter with more information.