There’s a road near the Buffalo Niagara International Airport which tunnels under one of the airport’s main runways (depending on wind direction any particular day).

This year this road has provided me with two surprises – both airplane related and none of them tragic or dramatic fortunately.

Early this summer as I was driving down the road in front of me taxied a plane that was blue on the bottom and white on the top carrying that familiar “Engravers” like font that said “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”. When you are used to seeing “Southwest“, “U.S. Airways” or maybe “JetBlue” taxiing in front of your car, seeing what looked like Air Force One kinda stops you in your tracks.

Well it was not Air Force One but it was (as I found out later) the First Lady’s plane (I’ve no idea of its airborne call sign) who was attending a fund raiser. Maybe not fascinating reading for you but some five months later I remain impressed by what I saw.

The second airplane surprise happened this morning on the same road as a plane was landing (or just taking off…I was driving after all so I’m not going to be 100% on plane details). This was a JetBlue plane with completely unique markings near its underside similar to the picture above.

This Jet Blue plane with its Yahoo and Blackberry sponsored in-flight internet access was a fairly new tool that Jet Blue offered (this article fills in the blanks).

As an active flyer I am desperately hoping all airlines get with this program fairly quickly (and keep it free for goodness sake) so that airtime can be oh so much more productive and, dare I say, enjoyable?! Hint, hint U.S. Airways!

Wouldn’t you like in-flight internet access too?

Tags: advertising, commentary, internet, marketing, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
Comments Off on “i” in the sky

No, as far as I know the service isn’t going out of business but it has lost its position as part of my social media mix. I closed my account.

I’m not mad at them nor was there any kind of dust up between us. My Space didn’t meet my needs. My peers and prospects didn’t use it and I actually felt awkward navigating through it. It really is a much younger skewing service.

I tried My Space because to me Social Media channels need to be experienced to be judged…assessing them without participating in them leaves a lot of room for error. Even though I knew My Space skewed younger from the outset, I also knew that at one time Facebook was a younger skewing service. It evolved into something much more purposeful for my professional and personal life.

My Space didn’t fit me. That’s OK. Every Social Media channel is not for every person and that’s the key take away here, especially if you are new to the scene. Social Media is an ever evolving space and the multitude of its channels, through which we all participate, also evolve.

Each of us who participate in Social Media need to occasionally step back, review our usage and either add or delete to our Social Media mix as we see fit. And as for the channel’s themselves, the fittest will survive.

There are still plenty of places where we can get together – I hope you’ll join me on:

Linked In

Facebook

FriendFeed

Twitter

Naymz

Tags: commentary, internet, social media, social networking by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
2 Comments »

Today started of kind of depressing. Cold and rain have come to stay and we even had a dusting of snow that ultimately melted…all combining into my least favorite weather.

Add to that the sync between my phone and my computer is on the fritz, so I wasn’t expecting to much from this particular Wednesday.

But I am about to prove that what you think you know about a day ain’t necessarily the whole story.

Late today I was on Google and I checked the listings for voice over talent, a primary listing in my field. And I did a double take.

Right there, under the paid ad as the first organic listing was audio’connell Voice Over Talent’s web listing.

Number 1. Click the picture to see the page.

It’s a nice feeling. And I enjoyed it for the moment. Heck, I am enjoying it now. I hope I don’t sound like I’m bragging. I know better.

Search engine listings, even on the mother ship, can be fickle things and positions change constantly. Yet it was nice to see a ray of sunshine on my screen today as the weather turned gray.

Thanks to all of you who visit. Thanks even more so to those of you who visit and hire. Everyone on the site appreciates you attention and your business.

Tags: audio'connell voice over talent, commentary, google, internet, marketing, search engine marketing by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
9 Comments »

I was recently feeling overwhelmed, being unable to get my head around my personal organization and time management. It’s ultimately a good thing because it was my internal manager telling me to stop, drop and re-tool.

The main culprit of my concern was all of my own doing. It was my RSS feeds….all the blogs and news feeds I subscribed to got to be too much. I would open the reader up and there would easily be over 500 posts. A day. Every day.

No way in h-e-double hockey sticks did I read all those posts, many on technical issues that I wanted to try and understand but more often than not came away feeling more like an English speaking student in a French high school. Nothing made sense and my shot at a prom date was nil. Even on other non tech posts there was a bunch of content too that I felt obliged to scan. Crikey!

I needed to hold an intervention with myself. Armed with a delete key and an itchy index finger, I started cutting and deleting and I felt much better. I was reading stuff from people I thought I should follow but it turns out they didn’t keep my interest (and I’m sure people could and have said the same about me…posts like this don’t help my cause.)

To now scan about 150 posts in my main areas of interest with people whose content I more closely value is a cake walk. Again…I scan all and read some. But to start with such a big number as I used to really made me feel overwhelmed. Now, not so much. It used to be hitting “Mark All As Read” was a kind of a white flag, a surrender of sorts for posts that I would never get to. Now it’s cause I scanned and am done. Much better feeling.

How are you at managing your RSS habit?

Tags: blogs, commentary, internet, social networking, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
2 Comments »

Truth be told, initially many internet radio stations seemed to be little more than young people slapping together a mix tape/disc of their favorite song and setting up a radio station. Some folks took it a step further and really tried to piece together a more professional sound. I think conceptually, a lot of it was good but in truth the commitment wasn’t really there with a lot of internet radio station owners.

But as happens in the shake down of any new “thing” the strong survive. In the case of internet radio, those who survive we’re able to stay committed to their primary goal of sharing their music while also securing an advertising arrangement that would allow them to pay their bills and even keep a little some thing for themselves.

One of my clients is one of those long haul pioneers in internet radio who has stayed true to his programming objective and kept the money flowing as well. It’s eclectic, relaxed and cool in sound and attitude. I hope you’ll spend some time listening to Roo Radio and enjoying the true spirit of broadcasting that I think many of my fellow voice talents respect. Also here is a sample of some of the recent voice imaging I did for the station.

LISTEN TO ROO RADIO STATION IMAGING
[audio:http://www.audioconnell.com/clientuploads/audio_for_blog/080914_audioconnell_RooMontage.mp3]

Tags: advertising, commentary, commercials, internet, radio, voice talent by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
2 Comments »

As this blog is “where the worlds of voice over, marketing and advertising collide” I try and make sure individual posts cover one or more of those areas each week. This post covers all three.

If you earn your living as a voice talent, a marketer (for your own company or on behalf of someone else) or in advertising (either for yourself or someone else) there is a trend developing that you need to think about. Why?

Because it affects how much money you’re going to make in the future. Think mortgage payments, new cars and education.

With me now?

Double click on the chart below and then click back for some thoughts.

That chart is part of a much more in-depth study produced in August, 2008 by the Pew Research Center for People and The Press. Maybe its stuff you thought was happening and maybe it even reflects your personal changes. But this is now quantifiable. And that means a lot to how we all make our livings. Pay attention:

You have just read a 15 year trend in media usage, specifically how people get their news.
* 24% fewer people in that time period get their news from newspapers
* 12% fewer people get their news from the radio
* 31% fewer people watch the nightly network news
* On line and cable news consumption is through the roof

This is about more than just news, I think. This is a game changer for people who work in media (including voice over), marketing and advertising. Most are dealing with this and thousands of pages of similar data already but I’m guessing you may not be, so let us ruminate for a moment, shall we?

Let’s just for the sake of this post take out concerns of the bias of cable news outlets as it affects their presentation of the news to the growing majority of American cable news consumers and how that impacts how people think, act and vote about issues of the day. Great topic and just considering it gets your head to throbbing but back away from it just for this discussion.

Let’s do say you’re a voice talent and you’ve been charging $200 for a :30 second commercial on local broadcast television and $150 or even $100 for cable TV spots because there are fewer viewers. Survey says that number is changing a bit (though broadcast ratings are still higher). Should you consider changing your cable fees? Is that change justified? Survey says maybe.

Let’s say you’re in advertising and you’ve been specializing in print ads which mostly go in newspapers or you’ve been doing lots of radio spots on news talk stations. Shouldn’t you at least reconsider either your primary business services or your media recommendation to clients? Survey says it’s probably worth some brainstorming.

Let’s say you’re in marketing for a grocery store and you do weekly inserts with specials and temporary price reductions and the like. Has coupon redemption gone up or down on those inserts? Any reasons you know of for a change? Survey says maybe.

Let’s say you are a consumer that can be influenced by commercials you see on cable TV, print ads or weekly grocery store inserts (we’d all like to say “not me” but we’d be lying). Could your buying habits be impacted by this change in media usage? After all, you’re the one changing the usage. What if you’re not finding out about all these new special offers because the media vendors haven’t changed their marketing plans for their clients? Clients whose products you normally buy or would consider buying.

The point is not that any of these industries need to play catch up because that’s what we’re all doing everyday anyway. A trend arises and we react. Tuesday go left. Wednesday go right. Thursday is too far away to consider.

The point is to be aware that there are very specific changes in media usage. This information is but one small part.

But do you comprehend the change? Do you even feel it, maybe? Is the change impacting the way you do business? Should it change the way you do business?

Is it impacting the way you buy things? Does it alter your opinion of brands? Could it alter the opinions of consumers of your brand?

That box below here is where the discussion begins…be a part of it, now. Thanks.

Tags: advertising, commentary, commercials, internet, marketing, media, radio, technology, tv, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
9 Comments »