114. Commercial Starter Kit

Tiwana Floyd shares the moments that led her to pursue a career in television commercials. From  NYC to Los Angeles.

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Transcript

To have the career I desire, the people who have access to the jobs must know that I exist. The casting director must know my work. Must know that I exist. 

Hello, Hello, Hello! Hello everybody. Welcome back to Acting Lessons Learned. I'm Tiwana Floyd, your host, Actually, welcome back to me because I took an unannounced hiatus. You know? If you've been wondering where I've been for the past, I believe it's just a little bit over a month now. I had to take a break. I was experiencing sensory burnout, which is a new term that I learned about. Our sensory system gets overwhelmed by all of the devices that we're on nonstop, and with social media added to the the list of things that we do daily. I was just tired and fatigued. So I took a break. 

I took the past 30 plus days to prioritize my projects that I'm most passionate about and the ones that are most manageable and don't zap all of my energy. And this podcast is one of the ones that I prefer to continue to create. 

I tend to get a lot of questions. Okay? First of all, for those of you who don't know, I book a lot of commercials or I have booked a lot of commercials in the past 17 years that I've been here in LA to the degree that I earn a living from them. I earn pension and health from them, from SAG-AFTRA. And so I get asked a lot of times, Tiwana, how do you book so many commercials? Or how do you continue to maintain a commercial career? I'm gonna answer those questions starting with how I even began my commercial career. So let's get started, shall we?. 

I have long been a fan of television commercials as early as six years old. Now I was oblivious to being influenced by advertising, but I enjoyed the entertainment of it. My connection to television and commercials stems from being a Gen X only child latchkey kid raised in New York City by working class parents. 

Now, those who don't know the meaning of latchkey kid, it means that both of my parents worked. And for some parts of the weekday, mainly after school, until my parent or parents returned home from work, I was at home without adult supervision. So I had keys to the house in the third grade, and I would let myself in after school. I spent a lot of time alone.

I had lots of friends, also latchkey kids who spent time alone with their siblings. Now, don't feel bad for me as an only child. All of my cousins and friends had siblings, annoying siblings that never left me desiring a younger brother or sister, let's just say. I learned to appreciate solitude very early on, but being unattended forced the television to be my best friend. 

When I got home from school, I was supposed to have done my homework before I turned on a television, but without the supervision of a parent checking on me. I always did my homework with the television on. And that's when my favorite commercials would air. Usually during cartoons like Woody Woodpecker, Thundercats, Oh, and my favorite, Tom and Jerry also commercials on primetime TV shows later into the evening. 

I found commercials clever and funny. You know, when I was a kid, I don't know what I, what I was experiencing. I just know in retrospect, I just found them funny and clever. Commercials were heavily character driven. And being a New Yorker, a native New Yorker, characters were an everyday part of my life. So naturally, I think characters and commercials felt like family. 

Now, I'm gonna date myself here, but the commercial characters who come to mind are Mr. Whipple, a supermarket manager who would snidely chide customers asking they, "Please Don't sSqueeze the Charmin." Or the sarcastic and quick-witted waitress Rosie, ready to give a slice of bounty paper towels to clumsy patrons informing them that "Bounty is the quicker picker upper." Then there's the kooky cartoon guy knocking people out cold with Hawaiian punches. Or any eighties Coca-Cola or McDonald's commercial, especially the urban ones with r &b tunes, or a big dance musical number. Does anyone remember Big Mac Filet of Fish, Quarter Pounder, french fries, Icy Coke, thick Shake Sundays and Apple pies?

The concept of becoming an actor wouldn't become a possibility in my mind until I'd say the early nineties, shortly after I graduated high school. But most definitely when I was at the Fashion Institute of Technology, I was there for advertising and marketing, and one of my professors told me that commercial actors would earn six figure salaries. 

I remember there was this gentleman that I recognized on the street who used to do Maxwell House commercials, and I said hello to him and I told him that I recognized him, older gentleman, and he pointed to his house and he shared, he purchased his home from those Maxwell house residuals. I also remember reading an article where Bill Cosby called his brownstone, the house that Jello built because he was the spokesperson for jello brand gelatin for years. 

It was fascinating to me that actors could earn so much money from working in commercials. Now, of course, I hadn't considered all of the agonizing steps toward that big payday commercial, like all the rejections, years of training and time spent in pursuit. I was ignorant to that part, but I'm glad that I didn't know because I probably would not have started my commercial journey. Either way, I didn't have the slightest clue on how to even begin pursuing commercials. I had no one around me to ask. But the universe works in that way. You just decide, start asking how, and the answers appear seemingly out of nowhere. 

When I was 19, my high school friend's mom saw an ad in the newspaper. Way before the internet, so this is like the eighties. And the, the ad said that a casting director was looking for actors for in-house projects. I didn't even know what a casting director was at the time, but I took the train to Philly and met with the casting director at my friend's mother's nudging. My commute was long and the train was running late, so by the time I got to Philly, it was the end of the business day and I didn't know where I was going cuz I didn't know Philly streets, but I found my way. 

The meeting was in some tall building in Center City. I was the only candidate there possibly because it was the end of the day. It didn't feel sketchy, though. The office wasn't one of those, you know, those popup shops that were exposed on the news, it felt very lived in, so I felt okay about it. The casting director was a brunette, tall, jovial, and jolly guy. He gave me a paper with lines, asked me to read them on camera, and as he watched me on the monitor, he said, Ooh, the camera loves you. I didn't know what that meant, but then he turned the monitor towards me to watch myself. But I had an untrained eye, so I didn't know what I was looking at. 

Now being a native New Yorker, I'm always cognizant that something could be unsafe. So while I'm in this casting director's office, I was lowkey just making sure that things were safe, that he wouldn't ask me to remove my blouse and bare my boobs like a scene from FAME. 

Oh, you don't know the scene. Some of you know the scene. Some of you are FAME fanatics like I am, but for those of you who don't know the scene or the, It's, I was talking about the movie, not the show in the scene. Coco, who is one of the lead actresses, she goes to meet a photographer for a modeling job that she found in a newspaper of all things. And he turned out to be a pervy Pornographer, asking her to remove her blouse as she sat exposing her 17 year old boobs while shamefully crying as he recorded her and watched her on a monitor. So I was having this little flashback, even though it wasn't my experience. But that film definitely traumatized me because I've never forgotten it. And I probably watched it way too young because my parents weren't home. 

But this casting director didn't feel pervy. He was legit. He didn't ask to see my boobs. He didn't ask me for money, but he did suggest that I take one of his acting classes. Still, he was in Philly, and I wouldn't be making that commute from the Bronx every week. 

Now around this time, people would tell me, "Oh, you should model." But no one ever offered assistance in how to make that happen. And I didn't seek it out because although I was 5'10 and all of 110 pounds, I was convinced, I'd be told I had to stop eating and that wasn't gonna happen. I loved food then. I love food now. Except I'm no longer 110 pounds and probably should stop eating, but I won't. Well, I work out anyway, but instead I focused on my skill as a trained dancer. 

Hip hop music videos were the space for dancers to work often for little to no pay if Broadway or Ailey was out of reach. So I'd read the Backstage newspaper every week to find dance gigs for music videos, and one day I saw an ad for The  School For Film and Television. They offered many classes, but I was interested in the commercial class. And that's where my first acting training began in a commercial class, and I definitely needed those classes. I knew nothing about acting and definitely nothing about acting in commercials. I was awful. I mean, I was so awful. It hurt. It was as if the teacher, Joan See, I believe she's deceased, so may she rest in peace. But it, it was as if she were speaking a foreign language. 

Oh goodness. I hope those tapes never surface. I hope, I hope they got rerecorded with somebody's soap opera on them. You know, I was just really bad, but I stayed at it. And from that school I learned the fundamental steps of starting a commercial career. 

After completing about three classes, I got headshots, but commercial head shots because commercial head shots were much different from my Hip Hop around away girl dancer headshots, which was like you had to like look like you was, like street, you know, looked like you wasn't gonna take nobody's mess cuz that's how Hip Hop dancers were. That was the persona. It wasn't even something that was put on. That's just who we were. 

So once I got these new commercial shots, I mailed my 8x10. Black and white headshots to a list of commercial agents looking for non-union talent. 

Can we go, can we do a flashback? Is there anyone listening who remembers the days of mailing headshots? Remember the costliness of doing, so? First you had to buy like 200 black and white headshot reproductions, which was about $200. Then you had to buy nine by 12 envelopes. And because I'm so fancy, I had to buy colored envelopes at a premium cuz that was my favorite color and I was trying to stand out. So that cost me more. And then to mail one envelope with the headshot was about, what, 50 cents I think, and then later it went up to 80 and then it was a $1.10. So imagine mailing 50 headshots to agents at 50 cents a pop. And don't forget the added cost of weekly mailings to casting directors for jobs. 

I am so glad we don't do that anymore. We have it so much easier now, and I'm so grateful for that. 

So back then, I would intern in the office at The School For Film & Television sorting mail, and I learned that people were sending postcards instead. So I started to do the same, which cost about 12 cents. At the time, I think it was like, I don't know, maybe about $20 to get like a hundred postcards and then maybe about 12 cents to mail it. 

So from my headshot mailing, I was invited to meet a commercial agent. Now I had adult braces, which is funny because I was in my mid to late twenties, and I now just recently have Invisalign. So now I'm back in braces as I talk about this. But, um, like I really like recently just got Invisalign like last month. So the irony. 

But anyway, I had, I had adult braces and she didn't notice the, the agent, she didn't notice until our meeting because the braces were clear and they were unnoticeable in my headshot picture. And plus it was black and white, so she didn't notice that. But I only had a few months remaining before they'd be removed, and she told me, Come back once I did. 

Well, I hadn't planned on calling her back because, you know, people just say things to be nice, but she must have kept some sort of notation because she called me shortly after I had my braces removed. So she meant what she said. And she became my first agent. Her name was Ann Wright of the prestigious Ann Wright Representatives. I learned that Ann and her husband Dan, oh my God, they was cute. So cute. Ann Wright and Dan Wright, they were agency Dynamos. It turned out that Ann Wright was Sarah Jessica Parker's first agent, and had gotten Sarah on Broadway as a kid. 

I admired Ann so much. I mean, her epithets were kindness and tough cookie. She was like, she was, she was a tough cookie and she was old school. She was like an old school agent. She spoke firmly with assertiveness, but she never raised her voice and she'd say things like, "Oh, Dear" and "oh my" she reminded me of a character from like the television oldie, Leave It to Beaver. 

She was this dainty lady who wore nice blouses. I'm thinking silk because they weren't cotton, but she wore these nice blouses and nice skirts or slacks and wire rimmed glasses. Her hair was always nicely coiffed with short blondish curls that later turned white, and her office was in the equity building in New York City. She once told me that she chose that building because it was easier for her to get on an elevator to drop off head shots of her talent for theater calls. I mean, that's so smart, especially back then. 

She had a roster of actors on Broadway, off Broadway TV and film. I'm now wondering if her commercial department was new then, or maybe she mostly dealt with Screen Actors Guild commercial actors, but then later opened up to non-union commercial actors after the Screen Actors Guild's longest commercial strike of 2000. That strike, by the way, was the genesis of commercial producers using non-union actors. That strike was a win lose for union actors, but it allowed union, non-union actors like me to have opportunities. 

Ann Wright would get me so many auditions. I mean, that woman kept me busy and I booked pretty often as well. Thanks to the teachings of Joan See and Neil Learner at the school for film and television, and later my misner training. Being on the field, auditioning and booking jobs weekly, I learned the makings of the commercial world from an actor's perspective. The biggest lesson I learned was during contract time, anytime I had to sign a contract on set, Anne Wright was a formidable negotiator. For every lousy contract or any sly in perpetuity clause, I'd receive on set, I could call. And she'd be on the call with production asap. She taught me not to sign those contracts until I spoke to her, thanks to Anne for that empowerment, because I have walked off several sets when the contract was improper, and I'm so very grateful to Anne Wright. She was the blueprint for the type of relationship and esteem of an agent. I've. Always sought out. Ooh, a quick sidebar. So, okay, so in New York City actors can have multiple agents in one area, or at least they could then, I don't know about now, but. What was it 17 years ago you could, So there was no exclu. There was no exclusivity like in LA or other markets. So I had another lady agent, same age as Ann, full of piss and vinegar, like those heinous agents you see in old movies. She talked to her clients like we owed her money, and I got to a point where she was so rude that I was gonna fire her, but my then marketing coach advised me not to, and he told me, Let her calls go to voicemail instead of talking to her directly. Both ladies kept me very busy and I began auditioning so often that my day job interfered with my audition time slots hopping on trains during my lunch break from Midtown Manhattan to the Flat Iron District or soho, all parts of Manhattan, really, they started to take their toll and once I left that job, I made commercials and background work my bread and butter, adding a supplemental income from working at an optical shop in soho on weekend. When I moved to LA in 2005, it ended my relationships with the rude agent. I don't even know where she is. I haven't even looked her up. And Anne, right. And although I have spoken to Anne three times since I've moved to LA in one conversation, Anne divulged that she didn't think that I'd stay in in LA because most New Yorkers always go back home. In my early commercial. I did not earn anywhere near a six figure salary. Non-union commercials just didn't pay that much. I think the most I made from a non-union job was probably 10 grand, and that was an anomaly. I always knew I had to join. SAD to get those big number residuals, and once I did, the collective bargaining had changed along with the number of union versus non-union commercials. Upwards of 50% and climbing maybe even 70% of advertising dollars goes towards social media marketing and non-union jobs. So unless you're a celebrity, those six figure residual days are pretty much in the wind, in the rear view mirror in the dust. And if you're curious to hear how I became eligible to join SAG after. Check out episode 1 0 2. It was actually the first time I booked my first natural, my first national commercial. Uh, the episode is called Agent Termination. Time to Go because after I booked the spot and joined the union, I actually had to terminate that agent, which was my first time terminating an agent. But that's all in episode 1 0 2, when I was still in New York. I booked many non-union jobs, but I was determined to have a career in television and become SAG and book national commercials for sustainability. And I knew I needed to be in LA for all of those things to happen because LA is the mecca of television and the opportunities were and are still plentiful. I moved to LA with a plan to only work a full-time job for 12 months and then move on to booking national commercials. That was my sole focus, and when I moved to LA in September of 2005, I didn't do a lot of hanging out because I had a goal and I had work to do. And as far as I was concerned, deals were not happening in clubs. I mean, I just couldn't see how maybe, maybe back in the seventies when people were doing cocaine together, a studio 54, but. I felt like that's not where my opportunities were gonna come, so I didn't really hang out when I first moved here and my timeframe, the goal that I gave myself wasn't that far off. I moved here in 2005. I booked, I think maybe three non-union commercials in 2007, and then June of 2007, I booked my first national. And that came on the heels of me taking a leap because I had quit my full-time job in March of 2007. I, I don't know where it comes from, but I am a faith leaper. I leap and I know that all of my needs are met and I don't suggest my way to anyone because look, I only know what works for me because I've always been a self-sufficient, super achieve. I'm ambitious and driven, and I'll do what's needed within my values to make things happen. So I don't suggest it for other people because I don't know how driven you are. Or also, I don't know what your faith is like. I have complete faith that everything will be okay, and even though there are bumps and bruises, having my back against the wall removes comfort and complacency. And let me be clear. There is nothing easy about leaping, at least when you're just starting off, but from my experience in witnessing others like me, over time things become more manageable. I've learned to allow those hard times to exist because on the other side of that challenge has always been a triumph. So now I'm pretty exercised and have a strong muscle in leaping and knowing that everything will be fine because it always has been. Now you hear me say this all the time. Repetition is the mother of skill, and I believe that actors should always work if we want to expedite mastery. And when I say work, I don't mean waiting to work. I mean acquiring my own opportunities to work. My short term commercial career in New York City taught me one key factor, and that's to have the career I desire, whether theatrical, commercial, voiceover, or modeling the people who have access to the jobs. Must know that I exist. The casting director must know my work, must know that I exist. When I arrived in LA I concentrated on finding and marketing to the casting directors. First before even getting an agent, I found a great headshot photographer, had a couple of my commercials burned on my CD ROMs. That's right. This was, this was early 2005, and we were still dealing with CD ROMs. The internet really wasn't that robust yet, and. I used what used to be called the Ross Reports, but now it's called Call Sheet. That's the publication that I used to find the commercial casting directors in town, and I'd send them postcards religiously every month. Then I got my first commercial agent. That story is also an episode 1 0 3 agent termination between my then agent. My postcards and self submissions, which I did a lot of. I began gaining momentum and auditioning for non-union commercials, and then I hit up against that same audition work imbalance where my job became an interference. To my auditioning, except now my job was much more challenging and energy zapping, so I had to quit the job. I didn't move to LA to be an optician. I moved to LA for a television career. I had booked some non-union commercials and made fans with some casting offices who continually brought me in. And right when I was in the final days leading up to leaving my job, I booked my first national commercial, and that's how I became s. It was then sag, now SAG after, but then it would be three years before I booked my next union, National commercial. Overall, I have experienced a good portion of success booking commercials. Because I moved here with that goal and I focused on it, and I stayed diligent until it happened, and now today I'm still diligent in that area because it's how I stay sustainable as I pursue theatrical work. But I gotta say the biggest challenge is maintaining consistency in my booking ratio and remaining relevant in a changing. Climate commercials evolve as the world evolves. So there are more non-union jobs than ever before. And when commercials became more comedic, once I found that out, I trained as an improviser for 12 years. I'm also, I'm getting older, so I have to shift into the next age bracket every 10 years if I wanna continue to book. And I have to be mindful and cognizant of how I present myself in my real and in my photos. The biggest shift today in 2022 is social media marketing and influencers and the creator economy. And I'm not gonna get left behind. So I went and I got certified in social media marketing and content creation because there are billions of dollars in advertising, billions of dollars. And this is the reason why I became a commercial actor in the first place to earn a living from commercial. The, the change of tides have put creators in the driver's seat. It's not enough to just be an actor. I'm watching many of my peers complain that their commercial auditions have dwindled drastically, and all they are placing the blame on is non-union jobs. But it's so much more than that. The writing is on. That traditional marketing is diminishing, and everything that I read today speaks of ad agencies redistributing 50% of their budgets to social media. Some ad agencies are adding social media departments, so staying relevant today. Is to be a content creator or an influencer or both. And that's the route that I'm taking moving forward. So that is how I started my commercial career. It all began in New York City and transitioned here to la 

Thank you for listening. Um, oh, if you wanna know more about me, you can check me out at tiwanafloyd.com, my website. You can also follow me on social media. I have 3 Instagram pages, and here's the reason why. Really quickly, I have acting lessons learned the podcast, which I share more actor tips. There's that. Then there's Tiwana Floyd Creative, which is being built into a gallery of my work as a creative. Lot of acting stuff there, but I have so much to post. I just revamp that whole thing. And then there is Life by Tiwana, which is going to be, or actually, which is my lifestyle influencer page that I'm just starting to get the groove into and I'm having a lot of fun there. 

So check out one or all three or two, whichever one makes you happy. Um, feel free to follow me. Free to drop a line. And also, if you like what I'm doing here, won't you please rate this podcast to help my numbers, whether it's a, you know what, um, just give me like four or five stars because that's really what's helpful. I, if you don't like it, you don't, you don't have to rate it. Yeah. You know, you could just, um, you could just say to yourself in your car, I don't really like this podcast, and that's enough. I'll, I'll kind of hear it. Not really, but we don't, we don't need the ones that choose, or the threes Anyway, it's nice to be back. I'll see you guys in two weeks. Bye.