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GEORGE: I was called
in by Bob Pittman who was maybe 26 at the time …surrounded by all
young guys under 20 or under 30 and they sent me to do the MTV
advertising. $20-$50,000 account. After
a year in production, they literally had just a few cable operations in
America. They were the most
abused cable idea ever created. People
were laughing at the idea of a 24 hour rock and roll station talking to
kids… who would do advertising in it?
The music industry was laughing at them etc. etc.
So they came to me and I said, "Well, I'm going to do a TV
commercial". They
said, "A TV commercial… we only have $20-50, 000…. what we
really want to do is advertise to the cable operators".
I said, "Forget the cable operators they turned you down.
They're laughing at you".
So I showed them a commercial where I drew a quick cut
commercial.. Wham, wham, wham. I
take the MTV logo and put tongues in them and all kinds of visuals
inside the logo which shocked them.
Then at the end of the commercial, the voiceover would say,
"If you don't get MTV where you live, pick up the phone, dial your
local cable operator and say… and then I said I would get Mick Jagger
or somebody like that to pick up the phone and say, "I want my
MTV". And they looked
at me and said, "Well, first of all you're not going to get any
Mick Jagger, you're not going to get any rock and roll star… the all
hate us. And second of all,
what good is that going do do?"
I said, ""If I can produce that commercial and run it
on the air, I think we can get a lot of young people and rock fans to
pick up and call". Everybody said they hated the idea and Bob Pittman said,
"Look we're dead in the water.
George, do it." So
I produced it but he said, "You'll never get a Mick Jagger".
What happened after a week, and I don't know how and I'm not
going to explain how I got him, I got Mick Jagger.
Which was unbelievable. BRAD: Come on, that's the most important part isn't it? GEORGE: I called him the patron saint of MTV. MTV would be dead in the water with out Mick Jagger. Anyway, he shows up, we produce it, we put it on the air… we run in San Francisco on a Thursday night with three spots… 8 o'clock New York time, 5 o'clock San Francisco time, Bob Pittman gets a call from the cable operator which means a guys was calling at 5 o'clock San Francisco and he gets on the phone and says, "Pittman, get that f--king commercial off the air." Bob said, "Oh I'll take it off right away." And the guy says, "Oh, by the way I'll take it". Bob said, "You'll take what?" … "I'll take MTV" Pittman said, "Why?" He said because I'm getting thousands of phone calls". So what we did literally was we ran maybe one or two nights of advertising in every market in America and within hours they were getting thousands of phone calls in every market. And we just forced the cable operators to take it. Six months after that first commercial ran, we were on the cover of Time Magazine .."I want my MTV" … they were talking about being the biggest cultural phenomenon since the advent of television. Of course you know, saving MTV destroyed world culture but that's beside the point. BRAD: And of course you have a line of artists wanting to be…. GEORGE: Oh they wanted to be on … they were begging me... I mean Madonna back then in whatever year that was '83 or '84 I forgot now.. I mean they were really begging me. BRAD: George, I gotta ask how did you get Mick? GEORGE: I gotta tell ya it's weird because I got a hold of a guy who was a friend of a guy who was a friend of a friend of somebody.. and I went through this whole long thing and finally got somebody's phone number and unbelievably he had come to New York the day before. And I kept calling the hotel and I couldn't get him … you know obviously I couldn't get through. So I camped out like a schmuck ya know on the corner …like one of those guys with autograph books… waiting for him and I literally caught him on the way out with about 20 other people running after him. Somehow he heard me say something and he stopped and he talked to me and he scribbled a number down… it was a hotel number and I called it back like 4 or 5 times later that day or the next day and I finally got him on the phone and he said terrific. Not only did he show up by the way, but he brought Pete Townsend and Pat Benatar with him. BRAD: You're kidding? GEORGE: Yeah.. I mean the guy was unbelievable. RAY: So he got what MTV was all about is what your saying. GEORGE - Well obviously he didn't before that… they had tried everybody... they tried rock stars to do some kind of testimonials on their station… but nobody wanted any part of them. I ran into somebody who had been at the original cable convention when they announced MTV, there were 2,000 people in the audience who were raucously laughing at the whole concept of it. But you know it's funny because after ...today everybody says wow, MTV was ideal at it's time it had to be a hit … there are a lot of big ideas in this world that don't happen to miss and you nail them and you can sell it to people and hopefully, that is I think what my career is about …so called marketing breakthroughs, marketing miracles… that is where I think the great fun of advertising is like when you do things like save USA Today, when you save a MTV, when you create a name like Lean Cuisine when nobody wants to do anything in that category and then all of a sudden they love the name and it becomes a big category etc. (The Advertising Show, June 2003) |