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OK gang, fun idea time!

As this blog is about voice over (vox), marketing (market) and advertising (tising) I thought we should have some summer fun here and combine all three into a voice talent business card gallery.

Simply email me a decent quality jpeg picture of your business card (front and back if you print on both sides) and we’ll show them here. Email peter (insert the at sign) audio’connell dot com and I’ll post all entries. Maybe we’ll have a card beauty contest and pick a winner…we’ll see first what kinda legs this idea has.

By the way, I’m not a pro at sizing these cards and images to fit the blog so some cards will be bigger and some will be smaller but size does not equal talent…at least in this effort.

Here’s mine to kick things off:

Tags: advertising, blogs, branding, commentary, community, logo design, marketing, radio, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I was visiting LinkedIn and realized I hadn’t spent much time connect with folks within the groups to which I belong. Specifically, I was reading about folks in the two University of Dayton alumni groups on LinkedIn.

I’m from the UD class of 1986 which does not seem like twenty-three years, one wife, two kids and twenty five pounds ago, but it is.

While I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me – given the news for the past year – I was taken aback by all the UD graduates who are out of work…talented, experienced folks, not simply new graduates (who I’m sure are experiencing job search challenges too.

I’ve got very little to offer these University of Dayton folks who are out of a job right now, no magic pill or super advice.

But I do have my networks.

There’s my LinkedIn network, my Facebook, network, my extensive off-line professional network of colleagues, clients and friends. That’s another thing twenty-three years since graduating from college gets you.

So I posted in both University of Dayton LinkedIn groups the following:

Hi Folks:

I was reading through many of the LinkedIn bios of University of Dayton grads on both UD alumni groups and WOW, are a lot of alumni (talented, experienced UD grads) out of work. This sucks but I’m not willing to just ignore the problem without trying – even in a small way – to help.

I’m fortunate; my voiceover business is going well as is my marketing business. But I understand how hard lean times are so I’ll simply offer this:

IF any of you are in the fields of broadcasting, media, advertising, marketing or web and you want to connect with me, feel free. I’ll accept your connection – even if we never met on campus. You’re a UD grad and that’s good enough for me.

THEN if you need or want an introduction to anyone in my network, ask. I’ll set it up. I’ll open the door – your talent and knowledge will have to keep it open. But I am glad to help get you started.

If you’re in engineering or law (or some other major that didn’t mentioned), my connections simply aren’t as strong but if you think I can help…I will try.

I have no idea if this will work for you or not but the way I see it, it’s a start, it’s free and something good may come from it. In any event, I hope it helps.

Best always,
– Peter

I’ve already made one connection with a person looking for some help and if that’s the only success, then great.

It helped me remember that we are not helpless to help. We ALL have connections but we all don’t think about them and how they can help others (hey, all this just occurred to me today and we’ve been in an economic meltdown for more than a few months).

So my question to you is: what will you do to help? I don’t mean you helping UD grads, unless you want to. It can really be anybody.

But you have to reach out to them…they don’t know you can help. Sometimes, like in this example, it can be electronically by pressing a few buttons. You can find people to help at your school, your neighborhood, your church…or something else, you choose.

And it’s not a heavy load- all I promise is an introduction to someone in my network for people who have shared a common experience with me: we all graduated from the University of Dayton.

In this experience, all I needed to do was realize I could do something…and I did.

So can you, this is just a friendly reminder.

Tags: commentary, community, facebook, linkedin, social media, social networking, university of dayton by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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No this isn’t about me voicing news promos for a client TV station, but rather some late breaking news for readers/subscribers to this blog living in Western New York (yes, both of you).

Like me, my friend and neighbor Dave Hassett had the terrible sense to start his own business with some buddies 😉 It’s a Buffalo-centric t-shirt company call Born in Buffalo.

The unique point of these shirts as the web site notes is that “Born in Buffalo apparel designs are instantly recognizable by anyone who has truly known the rewards and risks, the benefits and burdens or the joys and sadness that are unique to the experience of being Born in Buffalo.”

While you can and should buy some of these designs for men, women and children on-line, the Born in Buffalo Crew will also be out THIS WEEKEND (June 13 & 14) at the world-famous and also uniquely Buffalo Allentown Art Festival.

Their booth will be on Allen Street near Elmwood Avenue during the festival, a beer bottle’s throw from Mulligan’s Brick Bar which is also uniquely Buffalo in an alcoholic sort of way.

So check out the shirts and buy something. We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

Tags: advertising, commentary, community, logo design, marketing by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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For at least the second year that I have promoted it, Google again presents its “Doodle 4 Google” contest.

I know.

It’s a corporate “feel good” event that makes a billion dollar company seem more human and I should scoff.

But I love the idea and I love the art and I love that school aged kids show their enormous talents.

It’s nice to get the winning doodle be used as the main Google doodle for an entire day. Its nice that the winner gets a college scholarship and that his/her school gets a technology grant.

But it’s the creativity from young people that makes me happy. I think you’ll enjoy it too.

Voting ends on May 18, 2009. Join the happiness by voting by grade here.

Tags: branding, community, google, logo design, marketing, public relations by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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As a courtesy, I’ll say upfront that if you’ve no idea what Twitter is or is all about then this contest I’m about to reference regarding CNN and the actor Ashton Kutcher probably won’t interest you. If you like topical stories or information about social media, it might.

Oprah’s name and that of Britney Spears will come up too. Oh, so NOW you ARE interested!

The deal is that Kutcher challenged CNN and Ted Turner to a race of sorts: be the first person or organization (as CNN is a thing not a person within the noun family) to reach 1,000,000 followers on Twitter. Late Thursday night, early Friday morning, Kutcher beat CNN to the 1 million followers mark. Britney Spears tried to ride this race’s coat tails and evidently came in third without so much as breaking a sweat.

As new people are obviously joining Twitter at a staggering rate with no followers, with my 280 followers currently, I did not come in in last place in the Twitter follower race. Phew! You can find me @audioconnell.

Kutcher has promised to donate 10,000 mosquito nets if he won. And when he won he showed up a donation check for $100,000 to be donated to the “Malaria No More”‘ fund. That’s nice.

Hitching her wagon to the Twitter train, Oprah announced she opened up a Twitter account and got 30,000+ followers before her first post which is supposed to come during a taping of her show Friday. Bet she sets the record for fastest to reach 1,000,000 followers. I also expect to see the Twitter Fail Whale a whole lot in the coming days.

What does this all mean?

Do these millions of new followers some of whom have to be joining Twitter for the first time have any idea why they are following these folks let alone what the service is and how it can be used? Using Twitter is not rocket science but I sure feel strongly that some of these people now joining Twitter are doing it because Ashton, Oprah or Britney said to and that’s where it will end for many of them.

It feels like one of those cross roads moments or possibly the perfect storm for Twitter. Tons of free publicity from a famous movie star, an international cable news organization and the most popular broadcaster and trendsetter in U.S. daytime television; to get just one of those parties to support them, most companies would be thrilled.

But Twitter is supposed to be about community. One follows other Twitter users because they think there will be interesting discussion based on content, the “name” or the “brand” matters little if nothing interesting is tweeted.

Some of my 280 followers don’t get that. They want to sell me something and think I’ll immediately follow them if they follow me. I don’t. I check their profile and only if it interests me do I follow them. I feel they are not in it for the “community” attitude of Twitter and therefore seem disingenuous to me. If I want a commercial, I’ll watch TV.

What will all these new users mean to social media as these new users get their first taste of it through Twitter and the links that often accompany tweets? Probably broader acceptance if these new users go on to follow more than just Britney, Oprah and Ashton (after all, if Britney, Oprah and Ashton lose interest and tweet less frequently, their followers will have less and less to follow).

Through the links in tweets I’ve been exposed to some interesting resources in social media, marketing, advertising, voice over and my local community that I would not have otherwise found. I’ve also followed some of the people on Twitter because of their content and they offer even more content. That is useful to me. I’ve no real idea if I’m saying anything of use to others…I guess I hope I am but I’m also not losing sleep over it.

I’ve also un-followed people whose content didn’t interest me after a while or those folks who offer nothing more than 140 characters of self-aggrandizing commercials. It’s a bit of a balancing act to gain the content that you want and don’t want on Twitter while not allowing it to be a complete time suck.

I guess as a crossroads moment, it’s an evolution for the service itself and for social media. Sometimes it takes famous peoples’ involvement to help the general public be aware or take the time to learn about new products or services like Twitter and Social Media. As there are no rules per se with Social Media, how these many millions of new users will drive the service is an unknown.

Twitter probably won’t be the same after all this and I guess that’s as it should be.

Tags: audio'connell voice over talent, branding, commentary, commercials, community, internet, social media, social networking, twitter by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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From the FedEx Office web site:

DALLAS, March 4, 2009—FedEx Office (formerly FedEx Kinko’s), an operating company of FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX), today announced plans to offer its printing services in an effort to help job seekers across the nation. The company will host “FedEx Office Free Resume Printing Day” on March 10, 2009, offering to print up to 25 copies of each customer’s resume for free.

FedEx Office deserves kudos for it and here they’ll get kudos for it – for doing the right thing. Their service is free and here so is the publicity. Please tell your friends both employed and unemployed.

Tags: advertising, commentary, community, customer service, marketing, public relations by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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