​Denis Leary hasn’t always been impressed with the marketing around his shows.

In 1999, he had a single-camera comedy on the air called The Job, which came on at the same time as Jim Belushi’s multi-camera sitcom According to Jim.

“If you remember at the time, ABC’s marketing was all yellow, like that Coldplay song,” said Leary in an on-stage conversation with FX Networks CEO John Landgraf at PromaxBDA: The Conference 2016 in New York on Thursday. “There was a yellow background in a studio, and we all walked in looking cool like cops and then we all walked away. There were eight shows they shot in the same day.

“Talk about two fucking totally different shows,” Leary continued. “They didn’t know how to market The Job and then the fucking show died.”

But that hasn’t been the case for Leary while he’s been working with FX, with which he’s had two shows: Rescue Me from 2004-2011 and now Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll, which will premiere season two on June 30.

As head of FX Networks, Landgraf oversees a marketing team that has won five consecutive PromaxBDA North America Marketing Team of the Year awards and is up for a sixth on Thursday night.

“One of the things I’ve learned from my own marketing people is to start with the intent of the creators. That just suits my proclivities completely,” said Landgraf.

“When you came to talk to me the first time about Rescue Me,” he said to Leary, “there were some things in the pilot I thought were missing and I was trying figure out how to frame the conversation with you. You had cut maybe 40 pages out of the script before you shot the pilot. I read that draft and found everything I was looking for. It was there in your intent.

“That’s something I’ve learned about marketing. If it’s completely utilitarian, if it doesn’t have much to say, it’s not very effective. [FX President of Marketing] Stephanie Gibbons and her amazing collaborators take the time to understand what the show’s about.”

“Stephanie and her team’s creative ideas are just as thought out and as emotionally involved as we are when we are telling the stories of the show,” said Leary. “Me and the writers have laughed and cried in the room – we’re emotionally invested. When Stephanie’s crew comes in to talk to us about the marketing – it’s also full of all this emotion.”

That kind of relationship with creators sets FX apart. The network’s “Fearless” brand is based on such shows as Louie CK’s Louie, for which Louie CK convinced Landgraf to let him go off and create his own show on his own terms, and Noah Hawley’s Fargo, based on the Coen brothers’ original vision and then expanded into something entirely new.

“The impetus is to start with what you intend to create – you want a hit show or whatever – and backfill from there,” said Landgraf. “Marketing tends to be utilitarian because it’s made for a purpose – to sell a show. When you backfill, you never get to the grassroots of true creativity. You need to start with a basic idea, add layers and layers of collaboration, thought and experimentation, and build from bottom up.”

Leary took a break between Rescue Me and Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll to return to movies in Sony’s recent reboot of Spiderman, starring as George Stacy, father of Spiderman’s girlfriend, Gwen Stacy. “Those movies were great and gigantic and slow – and that was fine with me, I got paid shitloads of money.”

But he ultimately felt the urge to return to TV, where he could be more involved in every step of the process, writing, acting and directing. And he wanted to return to FX because his experience at Rescue Me was so good.

“I love television, I love being at FX, I wanted to go back to FX,” he said.

The idea for Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll, like for Rescue Me, was drawn from Leary’s own life. In Sex&Drugs, Leary plays Johnny Rock, a talented musician who longs to be famous but can never quite get there.

“I had this idea. A couple of friends of mine have worked for famous musicians. You wouldn’t know who they were. They are session guys. Some of those guys are fine with that. Some of them were fucking pissed off that they never became famous and they were really jealous about the guys who were famous who stared out with them.

“I was lucky enough to witness The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith backstage at a charity event I was hosting. And it was pretty fucking awesome. Joe Perry and Steven Tyler were yelling at each about what song to open with and I was like this is fucking delicious.

“Keith [Richards] and Mick [Jagger] also got in an argument about what to open with,” Leary said, with Jagger wanting to start with “Sympathy for the Devil” and Richards saying something to the effect of “there’s no way we’re starting with that. The band doesn’t even come out on stage for a minute and a half!” The Stones ended up opening with “Start Me Up” and Leary ended up inspired with an idea for his next TV show.

What Leary appreciates about FX and Landgraf is how they support their creators’ visions. “I always really listen to what an artist has to say and I think that’s true for our marketing department as well,” says Landgraf.

Today, Leary says that TV marketing has come as far as the TV shows it supports.

“It’s not just the great era of television,” he says. “It’s also the great era of TV marketing.”

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