Wednesday | February 08, 2012
Staying On Top: Carrot Top
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By
Daniel Jimenez
11 March 2004
It’s funny how life works sometimes. I remember walking through Beverly Hills in 1995 during my first trip to California and hoping to see a celebrity. I happened to peer through the window of a café and immediately spotted a slender young man with bright red curly hair having lunch inside with a friend. Eight years later, I find myself chatting with the same man about his life as a comic and the long road he took to stardom.
Carrot Top, otherwise known as Scott Thompson, grew up on Florida’s Space Coast and attended college at Florida Atlantic University. The former marketing major got his start performing at campus talent shows and local comedy clubs before moving on to national college tours and MTV appearances.
He got his first big break appearing on The Tonight Show in 1992, which launched him into the national spotlight. The National Association of Campus Activities named him College Entertainer of the Year and Comedian of the Year in 1993. He also earned the title of “Best Male Standup Comic” from the American Comedy Awards that same year.
The busy comic writes all his own material and goes on the road more than 200 days a year. He travels with a semi-truck full of stage props that he builds himself for the most part. For example, he invented a paper-cup-and-string-telephone with a third cup for call waiting. When he’s not working, the carefree bachelor lives comfortably near Orlando, Fla., in a lakefront home full of rock memorabilia and replicas of famous artworks.
Carrot Top is a shrewd self-promoter who also helped create the posters, t-shirts, hats, photos, autobiography and a new concert DVD sold through his business headquarters at Carrot Top Inc. His popularity has soared since he started appearing in AT&T’s television ads for “1-800-CALL-ATT.” The campaign has been a huge hit for AT&T and the company renewed his contract earlier this year.
During an exclusive interview with YOUNG MONEY, comedian Carrot Top discussed his college days, how school has helped his career and the pros and cons of being America’s most recognizable ad spokesperson.
YM: What was your college experience like?
CT: I didn’t really have a plan of attack when I got in college. I’m sure a lot of kids do that when they get out of high school. They don’t have a clue of what they want to do. They just say, “Well, the next step is college.” So you go and just like everyone else I went. People are saying to me, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” And I would say, “I don’t know.” So I actually sat down and started thinking, “What do I like?” And I always liked business. I always thought marketing in general was an interesting kind of thing. I always liked commercials and billboards. For some reason, I was stimulated by marketing and fascinated with how commercials would sell a product. So I got my degree in marketing.
YM: Did you start thinking about a comedy career while in school?
CT: No. I still wasn’t thinking about that. I was still thinking about graduating. I was just trying to figure out how to pay my bills. I thought I could make an extra $100 or $200 doing the stand up comedy thing. Right before I graduated I was actually doing pretty good. On the weekends, I would go down and play these clubs in Key West or West Palm Beach or surrounding areas of Florida and then I’d go back to school for the week. Sometimes I’d book a show on a weeknight and drive down to Miami for a 30-minute spot somewhere then go back to college. I was also delivering credit reports to banks in the afternoon. It was definitely a busy schedule. I’d go to school, deliver credit reports until about 7, then I had a night class, then I’d go do comedy. Looking back, I don’t know how the hell I did it.
YM: What happened after you graduated?
CT: I was still doing comedy but I didn’t have a clue what to do. I had my degree in marketing but I didn’t have a real direction about where I wanted to go to get a real job. I was making just enough money where I was paying my bills. I moved to Orlando kind of in a funk. I didn’t know what to do, where to go next. I started a job shucking oysters and delivering bread. I didn’t have a clue what to do with myself. I got a degree in marketing and there I was shucking oysters. I think that happens a lot [to college graduates] unless your family has a lot of say so.
YM: I feel your pain. I left college and got a job at Disney World selling fast food.
CT: Exactly. Even I thought that you get out of college and automatically you’re hired by this big firm. And that’s not what happened. I learned the hard way. Then one night some lady walked into a bar and said to me, “You remind me of a comedian that I saw on New Year’s Eve. You’re so funny!” I told her that it wasn’t me she saw but she said, “Are you sure? You really look just like him.” I remember that the next day I decided to quit my job. I called up a club buddy in West Palm Beach and asked him if he had any comedy gigs I could do. He said he had a gig for me so I went down there and I never looked back. I just kept doing the comedy thing. I wasn’t even thinking about getting another job. I said, “I’m going to try comedy until it doesn’t work.”
YM: Do you think having a marketing degree helped you in terms of promoting yourself?
CT: Absolutely. I still use [those skills] every day. I was just on the phone yesterday with my artist talking about our ad and our t-shirt that we sell. I design all the logos. I get the ads that come through and decide how it should be laid out. It’s all marketing. It’s how you promote yourself. It’s the whole show business thing. It’s the business side of the art. Just the idea of the name Carrot Top is all [a marketing strategy]. My real name is Scott Thompson. I could have gone by that name, but when I started doing comedy I thought I needed to go by something that has a little more of a hook. Carrot Top is a nickname that people call me and I thought that it was more marketable. I could picture [the name] on t-shirts. I could see it in print. It could be something that people remember. It’s even easier for people to make fun of, which is fine too. It’s all marketing related.
YM: Did landing the spokesperson job on the AT&T commercials have a major impact on your career?
CT:The AT&T thing was the biggest, broadest thing that ever happened to me. That came out of nowhere. I was doing my act and I think it was helpful that I was a prop guy and kind of different. It was more of a character that they were looking to use for the campaign as opposed to a guy that just tells jokes. I’m on my third year doing it and they’ve spent probably a billion dollars on the promotion. The down side is that you’re always going to offend some people with commercials. Period. People walk up to me and say, “Your commercials are so annoying.” They say this to me! They don’t say it behind my back. They’ll walk right up and say it. They don’t mean to [offend me] … I know that the commercials are definitely in your face and that’s going to happen because they’re trying to sell a phone service. Commercials annoy most people just in general. The blessing is that everyone knows who I am because of the commercials. The only other down side in terms of marketing myself is that many of them know who I am, but they have no clue that I do standup comedy.
YM: What are your future career plans?
CT: Before I got the AT&T thing I never even knew I was going to have that. I would be asking myself, “I wonder what I’m going to do next.” So I try not to look too far into the future because I think that everything happens and will happen for a reason … I think doing films or sitcoms would be a lot of fun. I just don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. I’m open to all those things. It really depends on where people see me going.
© 2008, Young Money Media, LLC. All rights reserved.
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