I am grateful that they agreed to participate in this freewheeling exchange.<\/p>\n What keeps you motivated day-to-day to stay in the ad business? <\/strong> Jason: I wish I had some elevated, artistically-focused reason for strapping my brain in every day, but the reality is that I do it for my family. My kids aren\u2019t terribly concerned about how creatively fulfilled I am, and my mortgage company is even less so. Not that I don\u2019t still enjoy what I do. It\u2019s just that the parts of advertising that I enjoy are the parts I seem to do less frequently. But I still like seeing my work out the wild or having someone say, \u201cYou wrote that? Cool!\u201d Having a client see results, both financial and otherwise, from the work is always rewarding. If only I could get some residuals. And there\u2019s always a chance that today\u2019s the day someone pulls out an old, red, 60s Batman-style phone and says, \u201cIt\u2019s time to bring in the Beard.\u201d<\/p>\n How is the ad business different now than when you entered?<\/strong> Jim: I have no idea. I mean yes, the digital stuff, as Jason mentioned, but advertising is about solving problems. And we solve problems by presenting audiences with new ways to think about things. I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s the same as its ever been. Too often our industry gets caught up in the latest shiny thing. Flash websites were one of those things. Social media too. But it\u2019s been my experience that we sometimes tend to focus more on the delivery vehicles than the ideas. That\u2019s no good. Ideas still rule. And that\u2019s been the case forever. <\/p>\n If you had to find another career, where would you look?<\/strong> Jason: Almost anything else that I would consider is tangential to what I do now. Comms director for a non-profit\/parachurch organization. Screenwriter\/director. Songwriter\/rock god. If the Prize Patrol ever knocks on my door, I\u2019ll retire from advertising and start a philanthropic, missions-focused foundation. Or own a ranch for rescue dogs.<\/p>\n How important is it to have creative interests outside of work? <\/strong> Jim: I preach to my daughters that they have to spend time creating. Creating is good. Natural. We live in a consumer-driven society with strict rules and regimens on how to best spend our time\u2014in service of revenue. At the end of our work day we just want to relax with a beer and Netflix. And so it\u2019s easy to fall into the trap of consumption. When they were little, my daughters spent most of their time creating. But now that they\u2019re teenagers, they no longer listen to me. Sigh. Yeah, being creative outside of work is pretty important to me.<\/p>\n How is writing literature more or less satisfying compared to copywriting? <\/strong> Jim: Writing my novel Minor King<\/em> was the best experience of my professional life. No, I didn\u2019t make enough on it to do it full time, but man what an experience\u2014letting go and letting the muses guide me. I don\u2019t know whether writing that book helped make me a better copywriter, but I know damn well that copywriting has helped make me a better writer. I also write a lot of poetry and see parallels between poetry and copywriting. In fact, I often refer to branding (taglines, narration, etc.) as corporate poetry. <\/p>\n Is living in a small market an added complexity or an advantage for managing a creative career?<\/strong> Jason: It\u2019s helped from a family budget standpoint, but has been quite challenging creatively. Regardless of what folks say vis-\u00e0-vis working anywhere thanks to the internet, the truth is that a lot of agencies \u2013 especially in the bigger markets \u2013 still prefer local folks who can show up for meetings or make the department look fuller during client office tours. And even when you do get a bigger, juicier project, you\u2019re still often just a cog in the process. Even if you were a very important part of the process and everyone digs what you did, you still don\u2019t end up on the shoot or in the edit bay. I miss the production side of things \u2013 you can create a lot of extra magic during that stage. Not \u201cfixing it in post,\u201d mind you. Just doing the best production possible. I see I have gone off the rails. <\/p>\n What work are you most proud of? <\/strong>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/adpulp.wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Mitchem-Jim-300x300.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/adpulp.wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Jason-Fox-Ad-Man-257x300.jpg\")
\nMitchem<\/a> lives in Charlotte, NC. Fox<\/a> lives in Omaha, Nebraska. <\/p>\n
\nJim: For me, it\u2019s using my powers for good. To help companies\/organizations I like and believe in. I know how effective the right advertising\/comms is on a company or organization. It\u2019s kinda cool to get others to believe in that. And watching their reaction when the needle moves in the right direction never gets old. <\/p>\n
\nJason: Obviously, digital rose up from the primordial bitstream and changed everything. And not necessarily in a good way. We\u2019re just now getting back to being strategic first and tactical second. I\u2019m not a digital naysayer \u2013 I\u2019ve had a personal website since 1996 \u2013 but \u201cdigital\u201d (a vague sobriquet if there ever was one) was sold as a panacea that could be all things to all marketers. Which, of course, should have been a giant warning flag to all, but it\u2019s always hard for people to see the yellow caution sign when they\u2019re focused on the green of a new revenue stream. From an agency life standpoint, agencies continue to be run by people and, therefore, continue to vary widely in their quality. Both creatively and, unfortunately, otherwise.<\/p>\n
\nJim: Something with animals. Being outside. With animals. But I don\u2019t think I could ever not be a writer. <\/p>\n
\nJason: It is very important and very difficult to maintain, at least for me. The difficulty lies in having anything left to give creatively outside of work. That can be offset somewhat by doing non-word-based creative projects, but let\u2019s face it \u2013 I\u2019m a writer and use words as the foundation for almost everything I do. Even visual pursuits like photography and video come with stories attached in my head. But if I did nothing creative outside of advertising, I would be useless to pretty much everyone all the time.<\/p>\n
\nJason: Jim\u2019s the novelist here, but I have done a fair amount of screenwriting, so I\u2019ll go with that. Anything you create that achieves the goal you initially set out for it is satisfying. But certain forms have a higher base level of satisfaction than others. Every form of writing comes with inherent compromises \u2013 whether due to form, audience expectations, limitations of one\u2019s own skills, etc. \u2013 but copywriting too often has additional compromises thrust upon it that lower the satisfaction level.<\/p>\n
\nJim: I had the chance to move back to NYC after college (as an adult, because my story isn\u2019t traditional.) Had a couple of offers in the city, one in Richmond, and one in Charlotte. The lure to work on Madison Avenue was strong. But me and my wife had grown accustomed to the warmth of Florida and were in no rush to return to those NYC winters. After one visit to Charlotte, I knew this was the place we were moving to launch my career. It\u2019s been a great move as we\u2019ve raised a family here and have a tight village (a perk of a smaller town.) Charlotte has grown exponentially since 2000, but I knew that moving here meant not doing high profile\/budget work. It\u2019s been fine. It\u2019s a choice you make. The work I\u2019ve done in this region has positively affected a lot of businesses. I\u2019m proud of that. <\/p>\n
\nJason: For paying clients, I\u2019d say my work on Interstate Batteries as it solved a real branding problem, and they were just a great bunch of people to work with. For pro bono work, the campaign films I worked on for the United Way of Kansas City were a highlight of my early career. A little more recently, I once filled in on an organ donation client \u2013 Taylor\u2019s Gift in Dallas \u2013 and wrote a two-word billboard that went on to become their tagline\/mission: Outlive yourself. <\/p>\n