Jim Gaffigan on the Best Ad Campaign He Ever Shot

Specs Age 50 Claim to fame Star and co-creator of The Jim Gaffigan Show on TV Land (Sundays, 10 p.m.); currently appearing in the Fully Dressed Tour Base New York Twitter @JimGaffigan Adweek: What's the first information you consume in the morning? Jim Gaffigan: Definitely my iPhone, and usually one of those New York Times alerts that scares the hell out of me. But Twitter is where I get all my news, really. I'd like to be somebody who gets the Times delivered and sits back and sips coffee, but, then again, I'm also somebody that doesn't really get up in the morning because I don't have to. I saw that you joined Twitter way back in the summer of 2007. How did you get started on there? I had somebody who was helping me with my website and she was like, there's this Twitter thing, and you don't have to use it but I suggest you join. So I joined in 2007, but I don't know if I used it until 2009, maybe. I'm a pioneer! What other social platforms do you use? I have a Facebook fan page, and my wife and I have been using Facebook Live a fair amount when we're on tour. After a show, we'll go out to dinner and do a Facebook Live and talk about the upcoming episode of The Jim Gaffigan Show. And I use Snapchat, but I have no idea really what it's about. And Instagram, too. Social media has been very good to me, and as somebody who tours doing stand-up, I would say it's the primary way that people find out if I'm performing in their city. Who do you follow on social? I get a kick out of what Adam Goldberg does on Instagram. He's this renaissance man who does photography. Because he's on the show, I'll typically see him on set with his camera taking shots and then later on Instagram I'll get to see what he's done with them. On Twitter, name a comedian—I follow all of them. It's really this town center for comedians. It's how we keep in touch with each other because we all lead such varied lives. What's on your reading list? Noah Hawley's Before the Fall. He's the guy who writes Fargo, and I just love Fargo so much. This guy writes every episode of Fargo, and then he pumps out a massive novel. I mean, that's just insane. We're going to eventually find out that there's two or three Noah Hawleys. What TV shows do you watch? It's embarrassing. I consume so much television. I'd say Game of Thrones, People vs. O.J., really any kind of hour drama. We haven't done The Americans yet, and I've heard that's great. But I have a stand-up bit on this—you just get sucked in. I'm envious of my friends who don't participate in the kind of binging that everyone else seems to do. It's a huge assignment that we undertake. What's the last thing you binged on? We just watched Stranger Things. There are times when you watch a television show and you think, "Oh my gosh, we're seeing a new star for the next 40 years," and [12-year-old actress Millie Bobby Brown, who plays Eleven] is that good. It reminded me of watching The Professional when Natalie Portman was a kid and just thinking, "She's going to be a star." I read that you've starred in over 200 TV spots. Is that true? It might even be more than that. I started as a copywriter [at Ogilvy] and I was doing stand-up, and I knew I wanted to stay in New York City and develop there—a lot of my friends were doing road gigs—and I was really lucky that I started getting all these commercials. I really just embodied the dumb suburban dad. From a performance standpoint, commercials are really fun. If the agency knows what you're trying to do and you understand what the strategy is, they can let you go. There's a luxury in shooting a 30 second spot for a whole day. You can get the script and then go have some fun. I think the number of commercials [I've starred in] is a result of the fact that I'll do the script and then I'll improvise a bunch of other spots. That's kind of what happened with Chrysler. So most of those Chrysler spots were improvised? Yeah. The Rolling Rock ones were, too. The point of view of the Chrysler spots are kind of how my wife and I write anyway, where I play this reluctant dad but behind it all, I realize that being a dad is the most important thing I'll do. The first time we did the Chrysler ads, I literally had to hold my wife back because she's so used to being the showrunner on our show. I was telling her, "Jeanne, you have to let them do this!" What's the most memorable campaign you've done? I did this campaign for Energizer 20 years ago that never aired. It was mostly improvised. I played a guy who dressed like the Energizer Bunny and was going to replace the Energizer Bunny if he ever ran out of steam. We essentially improvised different scenarios over three days—it was so much fun. I remember thinking, "This is going to be the campaign that lets people see what I can do," and of course it never aired once. I think they tested it and people thought that I was, like, insane. But that was just the most fun campaign. This story first appeared in the August 8, 2016 issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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Jim Gaffigan on the Best Ad Campaign He Ever Shot—and Nobody Saw

Comedian talks Facebook Live and Stranger Things

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