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logo contest winner

audio’connell’s International Voice Talents_trademark_symbolmark etc

My thanks to everyone who voted, who advised, who hated and who opined. I appreciated all of it at its universal root: the desire to help me when I asked.

You can see it all in use here.

Whether we are friends virtually or on terra firma…we are friends.

Thank you.

Thanks for reading.

If you haven’t already, we’d be honored if you subscribe to voxmarketising – the audio’connell blog and podcast by clicking the “subscribe” button on this blog.

If you really like this post (of course we hope you do), please feel free to bookmark and or promote it by clicking the buttons below on your preferred services.

print isn’t dead, it’s just not as papery

newspaper stack

If you’re running a newspaper or working for one, there have been many times in your career where you’ve felt your job may be threatened.

The two biggies, it would seem to me, would be when television became popular and then in more recent times with the advent of the internet. If I’d worked on a printing press for any amount of time, I think I would have had or be experiencing some sleepless nights when considering the impact of those two communication channels.

And if you are graduating as a journalism student this spring, I’m guessing you also set yourself up with a pretty strong minor in case the writing and reporting thing doesn’t work out.

To wit: the editors of the trade magazine Editor and Publisher report the following major newspapers all lost circulation in daily and Sunday subscriptions: The Washington Post, New York Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Boston Globe. Of the top 25 newspapers only the Wall Street Journal and USA Today gained daily circulation.

My uneducated guess would be that paid advertising in those papes might also be down as well.

We all still crave content but as consumers we seem to be caring less about packaging, more about convenience and still more about the delivery system. And oh yes, free is still better than not free. The internet is free. Paid internet subscriptions to news sites has pretty much failed as a business model with certain business publications like the Wall Street Journal being a notable exception. Even the New York Times is now free on line (it’s one of the best web layouts and I subscribe to it, for free).

In spite of the proliferation of gossip as news, most adults still want news…we want to know what’s going on in our cities and states and our nation. We have families to raise, homes to protect, knowledge to gain and print media plays a big role in collecting and sharing that information. They’ve just been slow in updating their delivery system from paper to electronic.

That switch is a game changer for the financially troubled newspaper industry. Some jobs will no longer be needed (pressmen, delivery truck drivers) and new jobs will be created (web programmers etc). All thru the change, these publishers are still responsible for getting the news out. Aren’t you glad you don’t have their business problems?

But we have a responsibility too, as news consumers. We are adapting and forcing the new delivery system of our news but we’re also blurring the news content lines.

What is news? Is your news the same as my news. If it’s not, how is a publisher to know what to publish and who to publish for? With the web, we can be very specific about what each of us decides is real news.

That’s a problem because we’re not all terribly judicious in our selections. According to a quick search today on Alexa.com, globally the top print-based news site on the web is the New York Times…coming in at #97! It was beat out by a ton of Google sites, You Tube, CNN, porn sites and ESPN.

We need to check (or install) our personal news filters (internal and external) to make sure we’re not keeping out hard news by focusing only soft topics we like (hobby sites, gossip etc). The internet and its tool can seduce us into stupidity if we let it (just as TV can and has). We WILL dumb ourselves down to the point of submission if we completely embrace our freedom of choice in news gathering to only the stuff that doesn’t trouble us.

We need to know some stuff we’d rather not know about (wars, crime, finance) too.

Thanks for reading.

If you haven’t already, we’d be honored if you subscribe to voxmarketising – the audio’connell blog and podcast by clicking the “subscribe” button on this blog.

If you really like this post (of course we hope you do), please feel free to bookmark and or promote it by clicking the buttons below on your preferred services.

the polls are now open

vote_button

As audio’connell Voice Over Talent has opened its division, International Voice Talents (which strangely enough offers professional voiceover services from…international…voice…talents, get it?) we needed to kick up the branding a bit.

Its logo time.

The goal of this logo design was to mimic some international signs with their abstract iconography; the good news was that many of those signs use the colors red, white and black as does audio’connell Voice Over Talent and Voice Over Workshop (see, we were destined to do this international voice thing!)

Place your vote below in the comment section including whether you’re picking the logo you love or the best of the worst. Voting is open to anyone so tell your friends…but hey, vote only once please.

Certainly branding is hard work but nobody said it couldn’t be fun!

(Click on icon for full view)
CHOICE A

1_international_voice_talents_logo_copyright2008

CHOICE B
2_international_voice_talents_logo_copyright2008

CHOICE C
3_international_voice_talents_logo_copyright2008

Thanks for reading.

If you haven’t already, we’d be honored if you subscribe to voxmarketising – the audio’connell blog and podcast by clicking the “subscribe” button on this blog.

If you really like this post (of course we hope you do), please feel free to bookmark and or promote it by clicking the buttons below on your preferred services.

still no bat pole

batman logo_all rights acknowledged

I find myself fascinating. Not in an egotistical “but enough about me what do YOU think of me?” way but rather in the way my mind works, has work and what I have remembered from childhood. Those weird pockets of memories that come to the fore every now and again are both powerful and sometimes confusing to me.

The purpose of that preamble is to advise you that today, April 21, 2008 is the 130th Anniversary of the fire pole. The whole history is nicely summarized here.

How this all ties together is that I always wanted a fire pole in my house to be able to get from one floor to another. As a child I thought that was cool and my opinion hasn’t changed. My father would ask me how I would build it and where with great interest but he never got the thing installed.

It was further heightened by the Batman TV show and the Batman movie. To me nothing could be more fun than flipping a secret switch, have a fake wall slide away to reveal a pole. It could lead to the bat cave or the kitchen I really didn’t care but how fun would that be?!

And in the Batman movie, you got to see a lot more of the bat poles in stately Wayne Manor including the switches Batman and Robin switched to change outfits. I still haven’t figured out how they flipped a switch while on the poles AND changed outfits.

But I have owned two homes and I still haven’t installed a pole. And I think I probably won’t. Yet on this anniversary day, it was fun to have that thought slide its way right up to the front of the line in my brain.

Do you come across this odd childhood memories too?

Thanks for reading.

If you haven’t already, we’d be honored if you subscribe to voxmarketising – the audio’connell blog and podcast by clicking the “subscribe” button on this blog.

If you really like this post (of course we hope you do), please feel free to bookmark and or promote it by clicking the buttons below on your preferred services.

is mary mckitrick bagel-phobic?

MCM_Voices

What a week it has been. Busy recording and doing a ton of refreshing to the web site (more on that in a later post).

Plus the weather is getting better so all the humans in the northeast are coming out of hibernation. Evening walks are often pleasantly interrupted by neighbors outside chatting, that’s a good thing.

Taxes were due this week and I need to confirm something that has been widely speculated – New York State does indeed suck.

Daughter got a cold from one of the kids at the christening awhile back so wife catches the cold too….while nursing and caring for our birthday boy (who is two months old today, hurray!) This all means moods are justifiably all over the place by the time I get back from work (did I mention the kitchen re-do that’s going on in the midst of all this).

Wheeeee!

From the blogosphere two immense surprises directly related to yours truly. One was via Kara Edwards responding to a blog tag from Stu Gray….I was also tagged and didn’t realize it (and I’m a subscriber to his blog…but a bleary eye subscriber for the past two months – see above). So I jotted down some thoughts- about- his- query.

Then the ultimate compliment and a first, I think….I was not only in the title of a blog post but most of it was written about me. Amazing. And it was complimentary. Doubly amazing.

My pal and fellow VO Mary McKitrick (who was one of the first voices added to the International Voice Talents web site…Muss sie Deutsch sprechen? Ja, das ist richtig.) was harkening back to a post I made on the VO-BB I think in the early 1930’s regarding marketing tricks, tools and habits.

One of my marketing habits for years has been to have breakfast at a local bagel shop. Now it didn’t start as a marketing habit so much as a “I like to eat and see people and when you’re working at home you don’t always get to see people so a bagel shop every morning is a good option” habit. But it evolved in to a marketing habit as I began to see business peers there and we would chat up business. Leads began to appear and I began to close some business.

Turns out my marketing habit (aka the bagel marketing theory , I call copyright!) has stuck in Mary’s impressive cranium for sometime.

Now part of the success of the BMT/sales lead strategy is that I knew some of the people I saw at the bagel shop from other networking events I attended…and I am very aggressive in my networking…I go to as many events as time allows.

Sidebar: I went to a new trade show yesterday, so active are my marketing hormones, and got one good lead. For the people at the booths who had been there since mid-morning, it looked like they were attending a wake. They were sooo glad to see me; “steady but slow” was how they described the traffic at the show. I don’t think we’ll see this trade show again next year.

So the BMT was what Mary was commenting on in her blog, to the extent that practically and as a habit she can’t bring herself to do bagel marketing.

It is because she’s anti-bagel? Well it might be as she referenced in her blog a very healthy breakfast option that sounded disgustingly natural and good for you. For those of us with the gigantisch networking gene, we attend events with fat filled muffins and sugary sweet danish and Swedish meatballs and often a fully stocked bar. Don’t let the occasional fruit or vegetable tray fool you. Professional networkers eat like crap because we have more important things to do, like pass business cards and laugh heartily at unfunny stories. But I digress.

Understand that until the kidney stones reared their pesky selves last year, I’ve had a large Pepsi and Cinnamon Raisin bagel with butter not toasted waiting for me every morning for years, 6-7 days a week. You do the calorie count on that feast and I’ll get you a donut while we’re waiting. Now I ease up on the Pepsi, how sad. And I seem to still be digressing, back now to my bagel marketing theory.

So Mary’s possible bagel prejudice aside (and we all have prejudices, mine revolve around vegetables) she has a real and practical challenge in the morning of getting her family started on their day.

This is also a challenge I now face. Yes, the bagel marketing routine at audio’connell Voice Over Talent has been interrupted by children.

Children, it turns out, are akin to marketing kryptonite. Time once set aside for networking (bagel or otherwise) is now taken up by family activities and responsibilities. Now, we all have children to serve a very real need in our hearts and lives…which is to have them grow up healthy and strong enough to do the our chores for us (house cleaning, lawn care etc) and so that we parents may be an enormous burden to them in our later years. It’s the circle of life.

Mary and I both share this marketing kryptonite challenge now though she is closer to her breakfast finish line than I am. Nor does she share my opinion of children’s true purpose in their parent’s lives…well actually neither do I but it sure does read funny.

In her post, Mary touched on what I think is the crux of the matter (she’s too smart not to have figured it out). It doesn’t have to be a breakfast place or even breakfast time when you network everyday or at least a few days a week. Doesn’t even have to be a meal.

Business owners need to figure out where the potential leads are, see how that location or activity fits into your daily schedule and if you can swing it, do it. Regularly. Hence the habit. And obviously for it to work, it has to be something you enjoy.

And if you can’t swing a bagel marketing habit, that’s OK too. Remember, a marketing plan can have 10, 20, 30+ channels through which you can get your marketing message out. Networking events, print ads, web sites, radio spots, church bulletins etc. You’ll have lots of opportunities to get your message out there.

The benefit of the bagel marketing theory is that it is low cost/no cost

Mary mentions a karate class she attends (yikes!) which I am sure has either fellow students or maybe parents of fellow students there which could be leads.

It’s a soft sell, these options, but that’s value of bagel marketing – networking in a non-sales environment. People don’t have their guard up (well, you may if you’re on the mat at a karate class but that’s also not the time to ask “so what do you do for a living?” — thump!). With bagel marketing people are usually open to conversation.

Ah, there’s the rub, conversation. In a bagel shop or in a karate class or in a book club, people converse and they ask about you. And you answer their question when they ask “what do you do?” and it’s not a sales pitch. If what you answer to a “job inquiry” question is applicable to something or someone in their life, they ask you more (a sure sign of sales interest) which means they are selling themselves on you…how wonderful!

At networking events, it’s not the same thing. Friendly and unassuming as we all are, it’s a slightly stilted environment…our Star Trek shields are at half power, Mr. Sulu, but certainly not “shields down”.

So pick whatever habit you like that will also put you in front of people who may be good prospects. And don’t sell. Don’t ever sell. Converse. If you start saying anything that sounds like a features and benefits presentation, step back, walk over to the nearest wall and bang your head against it one time. Then go back and resume the conversation. Don’t worry, you won’t remember your faux pas and all the other person you were speaking with will now only want to talk about why you just slammed your head into the wall.

Or they may just walk away from you quickly; I’ve found it’s a 50/50 proposition.

But always, always have your business cards with you. At karate class, on the beach, in church (“bless me Father for I have marketed”), everywhere you can “converse”.

Otherwise you will be caught with your professional pants down and that’s just as awful a feeling when it happens to you in front of a great business prospect as it is a mental image for the rest of us.

What fun it has been to be a blog subject. Thanks for the ping, Mary.

P.S. Read Mary’s wonderful response here!

Thanks for reading.

If you haven’t already, we’d be honored if you subscribe to voxmarketising – the audio’connell blog and podcast by clicking the “subscribe” button on this blog.

If you really like this post (of course we hope you do), please feel free to bookmark and or promote it by clicking the buttons below on your preferred services.

fiscal reality for podcamps

podcamp_boston_3_audioconnell.com

Last year, as I made mention in this space, I attended Podcamp Boston 2. There was an expected attendance of 1,000 at the home of the original Podcamp (which really interested me) but many fewer than that showed up (including some no-show presenters). I spent both time and money to attend the event and came away generally disappointed from the educational and interpersonal experiences I had. Looking back now, I wish I had spent that money elsewhere on my business. Ouch.

Compare that to my experience at the first Podcamp Toronto, which was a tremendous event for me professionally and personally and another impetus for me making the Boston trip. With the birth of my son coinciding with Podcamp Toronto 2 this year, I wasn’t able to attend but was still a sponsor, so committed was I to that event.

Now, Brogan and Penn, two of the founders of the original Podcamp event have announced that Podcamp Boston 3 will charge $50 a head. While this changes part of Podcamp’s original manifesto and will likely upset somebody (big deal, even the United States Constitution has been amended) I think it’s the right call. Podcamp is growing up and I think it needs to.

A free event asks no commitment from prospective participants, so who cares if on Saturday morning, an attendee decides to sleep in and not go to Podcamp. But multiple that a few hundred times and you’ve got fewer fannies in the seats than you had promised your paid sponsors. That’s a serious business problem.

For Podcamps to truly succeed they have to attract businesses as part of their audience, it’s a financial imperative. Businesses who attend will pay to do so and businesses who go further in their commitment to Podcamps by sponsoring them want a fairly concrete audience commitment. The free model, as it ages, offers more quicksand than concrete.

A fee more strongly encourages commitment without sacrificing quality or content. Producers of Podcamp Boston 3 aren’t making any money off the fee as its plowed right back into the event. It’s a good business decision that will truly test if Podcamps have staying power and real impact on both social media and business.

I want both the idea and actual Podcamps everywhere to succeed. Having real investors in each Podcamp bodes a lot better for its future than relying on pie-in the sky hopes and walk up traffic. Charging a small fee for Podcamps is a smart move.

Thanks for reading.

If you haven’t already, we’d be honored if you subscribe to voxmarketising – the audio’connell blog and podcast by clicking the “subscribe” button on this blog.

If you really like this post (of course we hope you do), please feel free to bookmark and or promote it by clicking the buttons below on your preferred services.