In the latest of The Drum’s series celebrating classic clips and favoured ad moments, commercials editor Sue Moles shares her favourites with Jason Stone of David Reviews.
“I love commercials,” says Sue Moles towards the end of her Desert Island Clips interview. “I do, I just love them.” She’s explaining why she feels embarrassed that she’s not more knowledgeable about feature films. It isn’t because she doesn’t love movies... she does. It’s just that she loves commercials more.
It says a great deal about her that she’s able to maintain so much love for the advertising business a quarter of a century after she set up the editing company where she plies her trade. There’s no getting away from the fact that she’s a veteran – before setting up Sue Moles Editing in 1987, she served an eight year apprenticeship with a variety of different companies – but it’s fantastically hard to believe. She exudes vitality of the most youthful hue and even though this is offset by occasional displays of battle-weary cynicism, the abiding impression is one of unquenchable enthusiasm.
Moles has witnessed a lot of changes over the years. When she started, the tools of her trade were scissors, sticky tape, notebooks, pens and a prodigious memory. When editing moved to computers, she knew she was going to have to learn a whole new skill set but admits that it wasn’t easy to adapt – an expensive Apple Mac sat in her office for over a year before she took the plunge and switched it on for the first time.
Although her father worked in the business as a client, her route into the advertising world was indirect. She worked in the Thames Water Authority’s press office during the 1976 drought and found the stressful environment surprisingly stimulating: “I was only doing work experience but I had six phones on my desk and they were ringing all the time – it was really manic. One day I said something to somebody – you know, off the record – and that night I saw myself quoted as ‘a Thames Water spokesperson’ and I thought ‘oh my God!’” The excitement got to her.
An administrative role at the Institute of Electrical Engineers couldn’t match the heady days of the drought crisis and Moles was desperate to find something “less boring”. An admin job at an editing company provided the opportunity she was looking for. Although she was employed for her secretarial skills, she had a go at editing one evening and discovered she was a natural. She was so delighted to discover there was something she could do that other people couldn’t, that she decided she’d found her calling.