This is a political post but not in a Democrat or Republican kind of way.

You may have seen in the news last week as an “also in the news” feature after the Haiti and NBC late night imbroglio, that the Supreme Court issued a ruling that loosened restrictions on corporate campaign spending.

As viewers and listeners, this means more political campaign ads – soft, hard and/or nasty – but upwards in some estimates of $300,000,000 more in political ad spending in the next political cycle.

Whether or not you like that as a citizen or politico matters less to me that what that ruling means to me as a voice over talent of political spots for radio and TV. If you wanted to, say, only cut me in for .5% of that total in voice over work – I’d probably consider it.

Some voice talents don’t like to do political spots and some, like me, study the client/candidate for their stand on one or two issues of high importance and if he/she doesn’t match up, you pass on the spot.

So if you’re of a mind to, you might want to dust off your political commercial voice over demo and maybe think about updating it if you haven’t in a while. It looks like it’s gong to get politically busy pretty soon.

Tags: advertising, political advertising, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
1 Comment »

Back in the early 1950’s 😉 when I started out blogging about voice overs (and marketing and advertising), there were like…5 of us. Now there’s a double-decker London bus full of voice over bloggers.

While I think I have them all listed here and subscribe to them all, I know that the playing field changes fast and frequently. That coupled with the fact that some bloggers fall of the face of the earth or get bored with blogging means my list needs updating. If you’d rather not watch paint dry, you can always sift through a listing of voice over bloggers to see who is still actively publishing…the effect is the same but voice over blog list actually feels more tortuous.

Example: one blog I THOUGHT I was subscribed to and had listed here was Paul Strikwerda’s blog called Double Dutch. Very good blog and you should subscribe.

Today I realized this omission and fixed it. But it reminded me to ask you if you have a voice over blog and are not listed with a link on voxmarketising.com to:

1. Please let me know this and I will correct the error
2. If you haven’t already, please link back from your blog to this blog (audio’connell’s voxmarketising – is the proper name and the address is http://www.voxmarketising.com) So simple, even a caveman can do it.
3. If you have ceased blogging and are on my list, just ping me and I’ll pull you off the list.

Thanks.

Tags: advertising, blogs, marketing, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
7 Comments »

It should not come as a surprise to you, gentle reader, that I love design and specifically advertising and marketing design. Visuals that must convey meaning and message in a short amount of time (usually) and birth an emotion and/or action within the viewer.

From a world wide perspective, there is no bigger brand in the world than Coca-Cola. My preference in cola leans directly toward Pepsi but business is bidnez and Coke is it. To wit:

With 450 brands operating in 200 countries, and 20,000 retailers selling 1.6 billion servings of Coke products per day — that’s 18,000 servings per second — it would be hard to find a bigger canvas on which to explore design as an enterprise function. (He) oversees a team of 50 designers within Coke and works with some 300 agencies worldwide.

With the curtain is pulled back on the recent design activities of the world’s largest brand, I think it’s worth a read.

And according to the story’s protagonist, the process may involve design but it isn’t about design – it’s about selling stuff.

Darn tootin’!

Tags: advertising, branding, commentary, commercials, logo design, marketing by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Fellow voice over talent Roy Bunales introduced me to something on his Facebook page that I thought was very interesting. It was a video that I guess has been around for over a year and has had close to 2 million views. The video is below, it’s four minutes long and I’d like you to STOP reading now watch it and then return back here for a second for a brief discussion below the video.

Let me ask you honestly…did you see that ending coming? I didn’t see it coming but on Roy’s feed, their was no title. If you were watching on TV, you wouldn’t have seen that coming either.

What a story.

Were you bothered by the length? I wasn’t at all, I was engaged, yet its payoff very much made it a commercial.

What a story.

And that’s the message for you today: story.

We went through a time and place where if an image was on a screen for a half second, that was too long. Then it couldn’t be just one image, it had to be multiple images.

Now we are an audience in throes of on-going sensory overload. We tune out advertising more than we tune in.

How, then, do you make an actual impression in the viewer or listener’s mind: story.

Share a story (not tell).

Offer a message (not promote).

Develop a relationship (don’t talk down).

Create a community (not build an audience).

It will resonate with the viewer and they will bond with the message, the product or service. I will not soon forget this brand…nor will you I think.

Not all stories are great but a great story will fill an enormous void. When was the last time your advertising or marketing shared a story? Funny or dramatic?

What’s your reaction to this? Am I being unrealistic? Or did this message find you more deeply engaged than most advertising?

P.S. So a bit after I published this, I came across the following video that I think illustrates my point even more…by helping shift the way consumers might think about a company…German engineering made “fun”.

Tags: advertising, commentary, commercials, marketing, media, video by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
3 Comments »

Just some quick eye candy for the logo aficionados out there as the Logos From Dreams Awards web site put together a series 85 logo types that I thought was kind of cool to study.

Interesting how similar some logo types are across brands and how truly different others are.

You won’t get back the two minutes of this day you’ll waste looking at these logos but I don’t think you’ll mind once your through either.

Tags: advertising, branding, commentary, logo design, marketing by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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In 1975, graphic designer Milton Glaser created AND donated a very simple logo for a campaign he expected would last a couple of months.

The logo is still seen everywhere and has been spun off numerous times.

It is no longer a logo, it is an iconic image.

Here’s what Milton has to say about it.

Tags: advertising, commentary, logo design, marketing, video by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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