Leading A Double Life

Mild-mannered Todd Lamb turns into "Rock Ninja," the freelance rock concert reviewer, when he isn't working as a copywriter at New York agency Mother. Lamb dons his black Ninja spy costume to attend concerts and writes his reviews in what he calls his Chinese "kung fu voice." The money that he makes from newspapers such as SF Weekly helps cover his Manhattan rent. In addition, the 29-year-old sells offbeat articles to culture magazine Stop Smiling, and Larry Flynt's Big Brother, a skateboarder magazine.Lamb, who joined Mother six months ago, after four years at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, could be the poster boy for advertising's moonlighters. Moonlighting traditionally conjures the image of harried breadwinners who have to hold down a night job to make ends meet. For those in advertising, working on the side is a way to spread their wings beyond agency life without giving up the benefits of a steady job. They can engage their passions, release creative energy and bring added depth to their ad work. And yeah, the extra cash doesn't hurt. Lamb says his side jobs are essential to maintain his creative output for ad clients such as Coca-Cola. "With a variety of things I stay more interested in each thing, because it changes from hour to hour. Otherwise it would be like getting only one channel on your TV," he says.Shalom Auslander, senior creative director at McCann Erickson, New York, held down his ad job while he edited Esquire's "Dubious Achievements" feature for the year 2000. After that, Auslander, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, wrote a collection of irreverent short stories, Beware of God (Simon & Schuster, 2005). One story recounts how God fired his longtime ad agency and hired Ogilvy & Mather.For a short period Auslander, 34, tried unsuccessfully to stick to ads and give up all his moonlighting projects. "I found I was trying to force Procter & Gamble to say things they were not willing to say because I wasn't saying them elsewhere," he says. "My side job is a release valve, a vent. It is painful for me to try to do ads only."Many agencies discourage outside freelance work, seeing it as a distraction, but Lamb and Auslander say their bosses support it. At the same time, Auslander warns that moonlighters have to hold up their end of the deal. "You can't say you are a stand-up comic on the side and just go out and get drunk every night," he says. "For instance, I check my work email compulsively." Switching back and forth between jobs, however, can be jarring. "It's like going from a hot bath to a cold shower: I'm writing my feelings about happiness and religion, and up pops an e-mail asking for a new version of the Xbox tag," he explains.Owen Bly, director of production services at Eleven in San Francisco, understands the culture clash. Bly, 41, manages a country band called Red Meat and started a record label to market their CDs. Working with the Midwestern band members on their tours of the Southern states—staying at Motel 6 every night—is a far cry from the techy, urban agency world of Eleven. "I'm with the band in a van on a road outside Tulsa, and I'm talking to an ad client about his budget, hoping he can't hear any stray comments from the guys," Bly says. On the upside, managing the band "expands the way I look at the world," he says. "We can get so swept up in the ad industry and talking to ourselves. Traveling around shows me [that] some things we think are funny might be mean to people in other places." Bly isn't looking to make music his full-time job, though it could temporarily carry him through an advertising dry spell. "I do music for the sheer satisaction of putting something out there that I think is great," he says.To staff at Amazon Advertising in San Francisco, Amanda Moody is known as the agency broadcast producer. But to many musical theater buffs on the West Coast, she is known as a playwright and performer. Her theater work includes commissions to write librettos, the stories and lyrics for operas. Two years ago, the 43-year-old was hired by the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival; this year she is writing Bitter Harvest for the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. But, she admits, the theater can't pay the bills. Moody estimates that what she earns in one month as a full-time permanent contract worker at Amazon would take her years to earn in part-time theater jobs. Moody says, though most of her colleagues are intrigued by her outside interests, occasionally they feel intimidated or competitive. She remembers a young creative who coldly dismissed all of Moody's ideas during a shoot. But then the woman apologized profusely after going to one of Moody's performances. "She didn't take me seriously until she saw my work for herself," she says.Moonlighters find sacrifices are inevit-able: Auslander can't travel to book readings during the week; Moody misses preview workshops of her theater pieces because she has to fly to an ad assignment; and Bly skimps on sleep.But it's worth it, they say. "To have these interests and abilities and use them only for your regular day job is a waste," says Auslander. "It's like owning a Ferrari in Manhattan." —

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Leading A Double Life

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