If one is to believe the hype from the National Association of Broadcasters, the proposed merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio may lead a kind of broadcasting apocalypse. I’ve no doubt there are those who have studied the deep financial impact for both sides of the argument. The FCC is their usually failing wisdom initially showed their hand to be against it but may have softened that stance a bit.

If you’ll allow me, I’ll make it easy for everyone involved.

Let XM and Sirius merge. Do it. Do it now.

I do not have a satellite receiver, I am not currently a subscriber nor do I expect to be one in the near future. I don’t dislike satellite radio but I am also not drawn to it. So why am I so adamantly in favor of the merger?

It makes sense, that’s why.

Simple, I know, but the best answers usually are. We don’t need competing services and anyone with half a brain (thus leaving out the NAB, FCC and a voice over talent like me, for example) could see this merger coming as soon as the two services came out. Two satellite radio services is one too many. There is not and never will be enough customers to threaten terrestrial radio and its advertising pot.

And most importantly, if terrestrial radio stays true to its local roots, it will never seriously be threatened by satellite radio in any form.

Let me take you back a bit to the 80’s when we had two comedy cable channels: The Comedy Channel and HA! They merged. You know why?

It made sense, that’s why.

Tags: advertising, commentary, commercials, marketing, media, radio, technology, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Hot and humid pretty much covers the summer weather in much of the southeastern United States and boy is that true in Florida.

On this trip, I was in Marco Island, Florida, just south of Naples, staying at the very nice Marco Island Marriott with a lovely room looking out over the Gulf of Mexico. Every morning and evening I went out on my balcony to enjoy the view and very quickly went back in my comfortably air conditioned room. Too humid outside for my liking.

What was to my liking was an impromptu visit with professional female voice talent Caryn Clark , aka “The Hip Chick Voice”. My schedule on this trip was constantly changing but it worked out that I could meet up with her before my flight home out of Fort Meyers this evening.

After some navigational missteps, I did find the Denny’s near the airport and had a very nice visit with Caryn, sharing voice over war stories (are there any other kind?) Caryn recently walked away from a successful career in the insurance industry to take up voice over full time.

Things are clearly going well for her in that regard or maybe I’ve just become her Irish lucky charm because while we were visiting, she got a call on her cell and booked a voice over job. Well done!

Yeah, we forgot to get a picture, I always forget that. Shame on me.

My thanks to Caryn (find her blog here)for taking time out of her obviously successful voiceover duties to visit with me. She’s a talented announcer and a nice person too.

Tags: commentary, commercials, voice actors, voice casting, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover meet-ups by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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A recent Harris Poll survey asked consumers the following question:

“We would like you to think about brands or names of products and services you know. Considering everything, which three brands do you consider the best?”

They’ve been asking this question since 1995. These are spontaneous replies. Respondents are not read or shown a list of brand names. Here’s the entire story and here are the top 10 winners with their 2006 ranking in parenthesis:

1. Coca Cola (3)
2. Sony (1)
3. Toyota (4)
4. Dell (2)
5. Ford (5)
6. Kraft Foods (9)
7. Pepsi Cola (not in top 10)
8. Microsoft (not in top 10)
9. Apple (10)
10. Honda (6)

Good news for Coca-Cola, bad news for General Electric (they were 8th in 2006, this year they did not crack the top10) and even better or worse news for some advertising agencies depending on where their client finished on the list.

I talk about brands all the time because it’s critical for the financial success of every business including the voice over industry. It projects the identity of a business in the mind’s eye and heart of its intended audience. Some people think this only means a great logo or a flashy web site but those are only two channels through which the marketing message gets sent.

Others think you can buy branding with enough money spent on advertising. No doubt there is a bit of weight to this theory, certainly a consideration based on the top 10 finishers…..but it is NOT the whole story.

While you need money to expose your brand and marketing themes to the masses, there are a variety of simple, low cost, even guerilla techniques any size business can apply in EVERY phase of their business. There are hundreds of books with the steps to make it happen.

From answering the phone to how to handle complaints, to invoicing to exterior landscape to business cards…everything about your customer’s experience and interaction with your company involves continually establishing, maintaining and/or changing their opinion about your business in their mind’s eye and heart. It simply never ends.

Looking at it that way, you can see branding often has little to do with a logo.

It has a lot to do with the company attitude – towards its customers, its industry and its own culture. Corporate culture is a part of branding? Oh yeah. When it comes to branding your company, start from the inside…then head out. Yes even the smallest company has an attitude and your customer both perceive and shape it.

So take a look at these companies….think about how you have interacted with them in your daily life…what makes you buy their product, feel safe about ingesting their food or giving it to your family, spending large chunks of money of their devices? Is it simply price? Or is it trust? Is it comfort? Is there a “coolness” factor involved? What makes them cool?

Now think about how you came to feel that way….how did you evolve (or in a negative case dissolve) into that perception?

From all that, what can you apply to your business? Yes you, the non multi-billion dollar, non-thousands of employees, non summer home on the Cape – you. Your business.

My point is the principles that are implemented by these top 10 brands are basic and can be applied to your business too but you must THINK about them, consider them and decide which to apply. They won’t all work and some you will not be able to afford. But some you CAN apply and some you CAN afford and some (many) you are NOT doing now.

So first think, then do. Enjoy the process…its one of the reasons you went into business for yourself in the first place.

(All brand trademarks and copyrights acknowledged)

Tags: advertising, commentary, commercials, marketing, media by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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A great product or service alone does not ensure a financial windfall. There’s this little issue of selling.

Notice I didn’t say marketing…I mean selling, where the rubber meets the road.

Apple’s iPhone now appears to have achieved sales success. My theory has usually been when you sell out and also get a bunch of press about what doesn’t work on the product (cause people love to tear about a success, it makes them feel better about their lack of success) then you’ve probably developed a winner.

While the technology was pretty terrific, I think much credit goes to Steve Jobs’ masterful iPhone presentation at Mac World in early 2007 that enthralled the audience and the web (oh, yes, the presentation has been viewed a few thousand times).

If you are in sales and make presentations to clients, you should watch the whole Jobs iPhone presentation here.

Then you should review communications coach Carmine Gallo’s review of the Jobs’ speech in Business Week to learn how you can apply the principles of the Jobs’ i-Phone presentation to your presentations

Tags: advertising, commentary, commercials, marketing, media, technology, tv by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Although we’ve got something like 500+ days left before the next United States Presidential election, candidates from the Republican and Democratic parties are already having debates on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. The debates are summarily ignored by the majority of the voting public even though they are covered ad-nauseum by the networks. It’s a vicious cycle.

This Presidential election has gotten the earliest campaign start in history I have been told and yet I’m convinced more people vote for singers on American Idol than for a President. I’ve nothing to back this up, research-wise, it’s more of a “gut” thing. Yet what choice do candidates have, especially those running for president?

The branding and marketing of a political candidate, public referendum or issue has become a real art or a fascinating battle depending on your perspective. How would YOU create a brand (and hopefully buzz…positive buzz) about a candidate or policy while competing for the attention of an ever more diversified and distracted voting public? Oh yeah, and you have to do it on a budget based solely on how well your candidate can fund raise…assuming he/she can get enough people who know him/her as well as who thehave money to even contribute to a campaign. That is why I guess we’re starting so early on each party’s “horse race” for the presidential brass ring. In politics as in life: follow the money.

And with the election season comes the political ads…some good, some questionable (again, trying to gain attention) but always thought provoking. Political consultants will again do their level best to map out a salient strategy for their candidate clients. These strategies will include a “theme” or “message” that consultants and candidates hope will resonate with the voters. Likely, TV and radio political ad campaigns will remain the mediums of choice to spread that political message to the widest audience.

Voice over scripts for political commercials are a great deal of fun for most voice talents (for me I refer to some of these political spots as requiring “vocal summersaults“). But overall today’s political spots are really not that different than commercials for any other brand. Political advertisers need to gain the public’s attention, summarize a key message and elicit an emotion in anywhere from thirty to sixty seconds. Sometimes the audience is uplifted by the message (“It’s morning, again, in America,)” and sometimes some mud is slung (politics didn’t invent attack ads; a quick example: wasn’t “The Pepsi Challenge” mud slinging at some of its most famous?).

I’m looking forward to the coming political advertising season whether from a presidential, congressional, state, regional or local election level. It gets citizens more involved in the democratic process for a while and I just don’t see how that can ever be a bad thing.

Tags: advertising, commentary, commercials, marketing, media, narrations, radio, tv, voice actors, voice casting, voiceover by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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So I’m checking my Treo today and up flashes as “news bulletin” from All Access, a radio industry e-zine.

“XM SATELLITE RADIO has suspended OPIE AND ANTHONY for 30 days, effective immediately. The suspension follows the airing of the “HOMELESS CHARLIE” rant about Secretary of State CONDOLEEZZA RICE last week for which XM and O&A apologized”. That “rant” included a guest musing about raping Secretary of State Rice, First Lady Laura Bush and Queen Elizabeth, according to the New York Daily News. I did not hear the broadcast.

It went on to note that the suspension was a result of recent statements that O&A made on air that “put into question whether they appreciate the seriousness of the (“HOMELESS CHARLIE” broadcast) matter.”

Yes, this IS satellite radio that these former terrestrial radio shock jocks got suspended from…the very “panacea” that was to be the safe haven of “naughty” former terrestrial radio shock jocks everywhere. I’ll leave it to the more suspicious of you out there to determine if this firing had more to do with the mix of politics and business (i.e. the pending merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio which would need governmental approval the FCC commissioner had previous to this incident indicated he is loathe to offer) rather than anything resembling broadcast standards.

Back track a few days earlier when WFNY/New York (former radio home of Howard Stern and terrestrial home of O&A) fired on-air hosts Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay of “The Dog House with JV and Elvis” show. Their bit involved calling Chinese restaurants and making obnoxious and insulting statements. I did not hear the broadcast.

Comedian Donnell Rawlings was fired from New York’s Power 105.1 FM last week for making an anti-Semitic remark on air. I did not hear the broadcast.

And then you remember the whole Imus thing.

So with all these disc jockeys fired or suspended, when do we get to fire the audience?

Yes, the audience.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if a radio station General Manager thought he or she could make their company money by broadcasting knitting and crocheting 24/7, you’d be listening to “Yarn 105.3” right now!

But people are listening to what I consider crap radio. Lots of people. And advertisers are spending money to have their products and services featured on these shows. Lots of money.

So since these listeners have made a choice that they are free to make and these advertisers have made a business decision that they are free to make, why are we blaming the disc jockeys?

Sure what they are saying is vile and crude and abhorrent to most of the citizens of the free world. Their humor is at best sophomoric most of the time. The problem is there is an audience…a big one…for these types of broadcasts.

Who is taking THEM to task?

It is the audience who is the truly guilty party in these matters. it certainly isn’t only about the broadcasters and the stations. In fact, I don’t think it’s even mostly about them.

I’m not sure if the audiences for these crap radio shows are getting what they want or getting what they deserve. I’m just glad there’s still an “off” switch and that I know where it is.

Tags: advertising, commentary, commercials, marketing, media, radio, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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