Daniel Gagliardi is currently a Marketing/Advertising professor at the College of Staten Island and has been for the past 30 years. He has many years of experience in the advertising business and has great insight on the industry. He rekindled my love with not just television commercials but advertising as a whole. I recently had the privilege to sit down and dig deep into his past. I think you will enjoy this Q & A!
JF - Where were you born and raised?
DG - [laughs] Your kidding.. yeah? Brooklyn.
JF - Where did you go to college? And what degree did you earn?
DG - I have a MBA from Pace and uh an advanced professional certificate from NYU, that’s above a masters. But I got my bachelors from Pace.
JF - What got you interested in advertising?
DG - I majored in marketing so I sorta just fell into it. Ya know based on that was my degree. And uh, I really just got lucky and went into something I liked. Rather than I had a passion for marketing and advertising. I really didn’t. I just happened to get a degree in marketing and I happened to pick something that turned out I really liked. It’s the truth you know.
JF - What was the first job you ever had in the business and about when did you get it?
DG - Ok. My first job was with Clairol. I worked there for um eight years. I started in finance because I couldn’t get a job in marketing. A student graduate school got me the class. So um, I was a budget analyst for a year and then I was a financial analyst. And the following year I became an assistant product manager, which means you have to be responsible for the growth, sales and profit of certain brands. While you do that, you obviously also work with advertising agencies because advertising is a big part of your promotional mix. So that’s how I really got involved in all facets of advertising; working with the agencies on print ads and commercials, and billboards and radio spots. And uh, every aspect the client does with an agency. So I stayed there like I said, for eight years, I was promoted to an associate product manager and then to a full-time product manager.
JF - Did you like it there? Why did you leave?
DG - Yeah I liked it there a lot. Clairol was a good company and a part of Bristol Myers Squibb. Who sold Clairol to Propta and Glenmore about ten years ago. Yeah, it was a great company and a great learning experience. Learned all about marketing and um… research, corporate culture. It was a fun type company. It wasn’t so structured that in inhibited you. It was just a good place; I left for more money. I left after eight years to become the director of marketing, and it was strictly a financial move for about $30,000 or $40,000.
JF - What was you favorite job you have ever had? Why?
DG - My favorite job was probably at Clairol for those eight years. Just because it was a lot of good people, and the company was doing extremely well. And they had a lot of things outside of marketing, like I got involved in the softball team and things of that nature. So uh, it was just a nice bunch of people. And by the way I still have uh contact with… three people that I worked with at Clariol. My boss, some person who has her own business in California and uh somebody else. I’m still in constant contact with them. Which is kind of strange in this business. Usually when you leave a firm you go your separate ways.
JF - What did your typical 9-5 consist of?
DG - Well it was never nine to five so that’s number one. [laughs] As I moved up the chain of command and as I moved onto other companies, it became more and more that nine to five was meetings. You had lots and lots of meetings all day. And you went from one meeting to another… and it was non-stop. And then at five o’clock when the meetings were over… that’s when you usually did your work. And most of the times you left at around seven o’clock. Between five and seven, as I moved up the chain of command with the companies, you had to meet with your people; because a lot of the meetings you had weren’t with your people. They were with outside agencies and merchandising agencies, and other departments, finance and sales and tons of meetings with other departments. So um, nine to five was a series of meetings usually, and from five to seven or five to eight was really getting the work done and a meeting with your own team. On most days ya know.
JF - Any good stories from meetings you’ve had with a boss or anything like that?
DG - Yeah there are plenty of stories. Plenty of stories. When your in marketing, things don’t go right so you had good days and bad days. Good days and bad days ya know. Days you get yelled at and uh you’re estatic; when your brands are doing well and days when Neilson comes in and your numbers aren’t going that well. So it’s much better in marketing when things are going well. I can assure you.
JF - Did you ever not make a deadline for an ad?
DG - I missed very few. Because in marketing, your usually running behind and if you miss a deadline, you’re really behind. So I made sure that um, most deadlines were made. Of course there were misses when we may have been a couple of days late, but uh in most cases that’s a no-no in marketing; you can’t miss the due dates. And no matter how hard you work, you have to make the dates. Especially if your in a time frame that doesn’t leave a lot of time for a lot of leeway. And most of the time it does, so very few due dates I missed.
JF - About how many commercial tapings have you been on the set for?
DG - [pauses] Twenty. Yeah around twenty. At least twenty commercials, maybe more; which I was one the set for. Yeah. Absolutely.
JF - And you were the person who had to sign off on it right?
DG - Yes I was the client there. I was the client there. At least twenty commercials where I was the client and I had to make sure that what was happening represented the clients aspect of what was supposed to be. Usually on days of shoots, it’s a pretty easy day. Cause if you remember in class we went over preproduction meetings, and therefore I was always keying in on, to make sure that during all the preproduction meetings, we covered every single topic. So that days we went to the shoot, most of the time things ran smoothly. I had some problems where we had a celebrity and she came late; four hours late an we ran into midnight. Which created thousands of dollars of overtime. That happened a few times; out of my control. But in most cases, days of the shoots weren’t bad because we were prepared and everything seemed to flow. In most shoots, in most shoots.
JF - That led me to my next question… have you ever met any celebrities throughout your career? If so, what did you think of them?
DG - Yeah, I’ve worked with a few. I’ve worked with a few. They are people just like me and you, some of them are a little prima donnas and most of them have a small entourage. Most of them, especially the women celebrities have their own hair dressers and make up people that you must bring those people in to the shoots. That’s usually written in their contracts. Most of them are nice, some of them have a little problem with time; time factor. You say you gotta be there, sometimes they don’t understand that. And that puts; when a person shows up late to a shoot for doing a commercial, you have all these union people there and that runs everybody late then. And once you run through the alotted time, then you’re on overtime and your paying union people overtime. Like twelve or thirteen union people plus if you booked a location, you have a problem one that you only booked it for a certain amount of time which means they are gonna kill you on price to stay there longer and so that causes a problem. So when the celebrities come in late, I don’t think they really understand how important it is, uh that that shouldn’t be done. Because it just kills the client, thousands of dollars of extra costs. And um, that’s the way it is in the business, it’s very hard to start yelling at a celebrity.
JF - Have you noticed any drastic changes in the way advertising is done now compared to when you first started?
DG - Yeah lots of changes. It’s much more sophisticated today, the agencies get paid differently. With visual technology you can do a lot of different versions of a commercial. You uh, today there aren’t a lot of roughs, you almost can see a commercial completed on the same day, you usually waited. Technology has made it a lot easier. Special effects are easier to do, because there are so many companies that do special effects and animation; when I used to work, prior, there weren’t a lot of companies, so that became a real challenge. Today if you hire a production house, any type of special effects or animation spot or anything like that are a lot easier. A lot easier, to produce and make them look good. But it’s still the same problems. Ya know you got to get the producer and assistant producer and a timer and a clocker and uh all the various facets that go into it; you still got preproduction meetings and you still gotta make sure you hire the talent for the commercials and stuff like that. None of that has really changed except, it’s become more sophisticated.
JF - Is CSI the first college you have taught at?
DG - Yes.
JF - When did you start here?
DG - 1979. Matter of fact [laughs] I just got the thirty-year award for whatever that is, longevity. Part time, part time, I was mostly part time but now I’m full time.
JF - Do you ever miss the office life?
DG - Um, I miss the action of marketing. But I don’t miss the hours. So um, I guess you can say probably not because the hours were a killer and um, at this stage in my life I’m not looking to put seventy-hour weeks in. I’m just not, I don’t want to do it, so uh… I don’t miss that aspect. But I do miss working with people, I miss the action of advertising and marketing and watching a brand grow. So that’s the tradeoff but time wise, I just don’t think I could do it anymore. Just too much time, and stress and tension and today they are really driven by your sales. So um, today it is extremely research oriented. Where at least when I was involved, we made some decisions without extensive research. Today everything is research oriented. Just like you’re doing for this blog, today the whole thing is social marketing. The blogs, the twitters, all these sites. Even when you get a website today, you really got to have a blog associated with it, you really got to have something linked to youtube. You probably got to have something with twitter linked to it. So it’s much more digital today.
