Ok, well there’s actually nothing to win but certainly check your mail!

And maybe you already have, which is why you’re checking out this page. Welcome to my voiceover blog.

If we haven’t properly met yet, hi, I’m Peter.

Yes, I sent out a new direct mail postcard this week to about 900 of my media production peers who work in audio production, TV and radio production, TV promo, explainer video production, documentaries and darn near every other kind of electronic production worldwide that uses voiceover.

I hadn’t done a mailer in a while, and with this year being my 35 anniversary in voiceover, I figured that’s something to talk about on a big postcard.

Why direct mail?

People still love getting unique stuff in the mail, even an oversized postcard. It’s a reminder to those I’ve worked with before that I’m still around (give me a call). It’s also an introduction to folks who may have heard of me (or may not have heard of me) but might need some professional voice talent help – the card is a friendly hello (give me a call) to them as well.

I’ll still do email blasts every now and again but I fear those don’t get read as much as they used to…my open rates are still good and I keep the message short and sweet!

So if you’re just finding me for the first time, hi (welcome!), and if you’re returning, hi again and thanks for coming back.

Oh and if you do need to call me, I’m on +01 716-572-1800.

Tags: advertising, audio production, branding, commercials, explainer videos, marketing, narrations, tv, TV promo, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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You probably didn’t get the memo.

Or if you’re like me (and God help you if you are), you kinda noticed something different on your Twitter profile but ignored it and moved on…until you DID notice it.

Twitter changed the layout of your profile, not a ton but juuuust enough to screw with your branding.

The little profile picture on your Twitter profile, you know, the one the shows up next to every tweet? The size of that got changed last week.

It used to be a square and now it’s a circle.

Big deal, you say? Who cares, you say?

Well maybe it’s not Armageddon, but depending on the size of your profile picture, the image may have gotten cut off, leaving your branding looking a bit sloppier than you may prefer. Prospects look at social media accounts and judge you on your branding. Just like you judge others on their branding.

Now is it a bigger deal for you?

The fix is easy enough (just more unnecessary work). Take your original picture and make it a bit smaller so the rounded edges of the new circle don’t cut off your image.

Then re-upload the pic to Twitter, resize if necessary and save.

Then wait for some body else at Twitter to unnecessarily change something else without letting you know.

Hope this helps.

Tags: advertising, branding, commentary, marketing, social media, twitter by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Let me be clear, I really like the city of San Diego. I would consider living there if only the city was not in the state of California.

As far as football, this week they announced they are leaving San Diego and going to live in Los Angeles. Oh well, that’s sports.

But with a new city comes a new logo and that’s where I become interested. Don’t get me wrong, I like sports. But logos, I really like.

As I have noted here before, team like the Los Angeles Rams can really botch a logo opportunity. Badly.

Well in just a few days, the Chargers of Los Angeles have quickly botched their new logo opportunity as well.

The logo roll out gives you a pretty fair indication of what kind of operational chaos the Chargers of (pick any city in California, I guess) are in.

Now, to begin with, the Chargers, late of San Diego, seem to me to have lost a bet when it came to logos and colors. Certainly, they didn’t have as bad a situation of it as the Cleveland Browns, but logo and word mark wise, the Chargers could certainly do better with the move to LA and a new icon.

The logo roll out (such as it was) gives you a pretty fair indication of what kind of operational chaos the Chargers of (pick any city in California, I guess) are in.

The first logo (LA on the left) was, I’m pretty sure, designed on Fiver as it looked like an amateurish mating of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Lightning.

I wasn’t the only one who caught that (the internet had a blast with it).

Then, for reasons that I perceive as panic driven because of the poor reception given the Los Angeles Chargers “Fiver Logo”, the team went back to their horrible word mark with yellow/goldish lettering on a light blue background about 24 hours later. They must have called the “braintrust” at the Los Angeles Rams for advice and were told, go back to your old imagery and just change the city name.

Then to add insult to injury, the LA Chargers went and hired a coach from the Buffalo Bills to be their new head coach. Who hires anybody from the recent Bills staff and hopes to win anything? Oh yeah, Jacksonville. Oy!

So between this logo fiasco (and I expect it to continue) and the coaching choice, don’t expect season ticket sales to go through the roof next season for the Chargers.

In other sports news, the Oakland Raiders (it seems) will be moving to Las Vegas in a few years. Hope their new logo is better than the horribleness that is the name, branding and worst of all colors for the Las Vegas Golden Knights. Ick!

Tags: branding, commentary, logo design, marketing by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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This is a conundrum.

On the one hand, as a Buffalo Sabres fan, I shouldn’t even HAVE a Toronto Maple Leafs logo on this web site. It is sacrilege.

On the other hand, the possible switch of one of the more famous logos in the NHL interests the heck outta me.

So Go Leafs Go!

In spite of not having won a Stanley Cup in many years (like many, many years) it is still one of the most famous teams in hockey. It was the city I saw my first NHL game in at the old Maple Leaf Garden.

It is said that in honor of the team’s 100th Anniversary next year, their will be a new logo (and one assumes uniforms as well).

The logo is famous but I would not call it iconic. It’s not as ugly as, say, the New Jersey Devils logo. Simple as it is, I find the Maple Leaf logo attractive but certainly with room for improvement.

There has been no official logo redesigned yet but the talk of a new Maple Leafs logo has the sports graphic design world (mostly amateurs at this point, I believe) frothing at the mouth. Understandable, as it’s an exciting proposition.

There are a lot of ideas out there but one early logo I’ve seen really shows promise. The designer is Matt McElroy. It retains the simplicity of the original mark, the colors (which any would be crazy to change) and adds a kind of simple strength to me.

Toronto Maple Leafs Logo Concept By Matt McElroy Number9Concepts All Rights Reserved

It takes a well know international hockey mark (the blue maple leaf) and adds a simply, strong “T” to a new logo that everyone in the NHL (and probably the world hockey community) would know instantly.

Toronto Maple Leafs Uniform Concept By Matt McElroy Number9Concepts All Rights Reserved

Do I think this will be the winning design? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure that logo race is just getting started and some big logo design houses (hopefully not just uniform makers, oy!) will get in on the race.

This should be a lot of fun.

Tags: branding, logo design, marketing by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I really need to listen to my inner voices sometimes.

About 3-4 months ago I remember seeing the CBS Sports logo and thinking “Man, that thing is dated!”

Now I come to find out that at the end of November, CBS Sports announced they are unveiling their new logo during Super Bowl 50 (notice “50”, not the roman number for 50 which would be “L”, which in the common vernacular would stand for “loser” — this is my guess as to why the NFL isn’t using the “L”).

It’s good that they are updating the logo. The problem is the new logo sucks.

Drab. Dull. Not a damn sporty thing about it.

Now you may say “it’s a TV logo, they’re going to make it bounce around and spin and look really cool in motion.”

Fine but no. A logo needs to be able to convey the message of what you (your brand, company) do, in and of itself. This new CBS logo could be for a CPA firm or even a dishwasher. The old one at least has a little style and some motion to it. It felt a bit sporty.

Where’s the action? Where’s the excitement in this new CBS Sports logo? It’s SPORTS for goodness sake. Where’s the vibrance? Where’s the motion? The old logo (much as it needed a refresh) had lots of these attributes.

But of course the old CBS Sports logo did not posses a classic style to it that would allow it to live forever like, for example, the logo of its mother ship, the CBS Television Network and it’s classic Eye logo and font. This logo will (and should) live forever.

So let’s take a quick peek at how this new sports network for CBS compares to some of the other sports network logos.

When looking at sports networks, you’s have to start with ESPN which has gone from a little cable station in Bristol, Connecticut to a sports giant. How big? Basically, ABC Sports ceased to exist when Disney (which owns ABC) bought ESPN. And this logo needs a refresh. It looks about as 80’s as the old CBS Sports logo.

Fox Sports logo is…meh. Whether it’s Fox Sports, Fox News and the Fox Network, the logo is plain. Not bad, just plain. Such a wide ranging and successful company should have a more impressive network icon. But again, there’s a reason I’m not part of this discussion. 😉

Finally NBC Sports. This is a bit of a mashup. You’ve got the iconic peacock (one of the great logo refreshes/rebirths of the 20th Century), the recently refreshed NBC workmark (which I like very much) and the scripted sports work mark, which is just OK. But of the three logos, probably NBC Sports works the best as a logo.

So there you have it, my take on network sports logos.

The bad news is you can’t get the last five minutes of your life back. 🙂

Tags: branding, CBS Television Network, logo design, marketing by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Media Communications Association-International has completely redone their association logo

Before I begin, I feel I must disclose that I was a past-member of Media Communications Association -International (MCA-I) and a national board member.

That’s right, the poor group (at the time) must have been in such desperate shape that they put me on their national board. And I have friends who are still on that board (and who are making it a great association today). I like the group but I was the only Buffalo-member, and with kids, I couldn’t build up the group locally — no time. But we did some great stuff of the national group.

With all that cleared up, I feel I am ready now to address that MCA-I has gotten a brand new logo for the association.

For any of you who have ever served on a not-for-profit board, you know that getting marketing stuff done like a new logo is like passing a kidney stone…difficult and painful, there will be vomiting and crying and the positive result will be a relatively small outcome from a lot of work.

But in MCA-I’s case, the new logo was TOTALLY worth the effort. It’s awesome!

I don’t know who designed the logo but it’s great.

I suppose I actually ought to give some historical perspective on why this new logo came about.

The old logo sucked.

OK, enough with beating around the bush, eh?

Well, I liked the colors of the old logo and the font but it was altogether too odd. It looked too much like one of the drawings CBS might have thrown out when they were first designing the CBS Eye logo. This is just my opinion of course, but since they have a new logo, someone in power over there agrees with me.

Allegedly.

This new logo (specifically with it’s icon) speaks to the heritage of the media professionals who started the association, working initally in film, evolving with the medium into video, straight through to the new generation of digital media producers who make up much of the MCA-I’s current memberships (certainly there are still many filmmakers still in the group).

For all of them, that icon totally works.

The font and capitalization of the word mark is sharp with rounded and pointed corners. Just nice. And they held on to those great, unique colors.

Plus I have seen some different versions of the logo for different uses and it is really flexible.

So congrats to ALL who were involved in the design of this new logo and the marketing plans that go with it. Job well done. I hope your group continues to shine.

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