I was thinking yesterday I should write a blog post only because I hadn’t in a while and I’m sure someone is keeping score and if I don’t write something I’ll get blogger’s demerits or something.

Assuming such things exist.

Anyway my idea was to write about how public relations’ companies often pitch bloggers about their clients’ products or services in hope that they will write about them on their presumably popular blog. These rock-star bloggers often complain (well “bitch” is the proper term for all the whining I read) about how these pitches are often impersonal and dull. The bloggers have a point – personalization while time consuming often pays great dividends.

But then I realized I am not a rock star blogger. I don’t think I even know any rock stars although I did have a nice conversation a few years ago with the Goo-Goo Dolls Robby Takac (who by the way has great pipes for voice over and has done some VO work). Tangent aside, I don’t get pitched a lot. So then I thought why should I write about it?

Then lo and behold I get an email today from Mahmoud Taji in Cairo, Egypt who asked if I might take a moment to review and write about his new site Taji’s Voice Over Directory. Well that seems simple enough.

The site is hosted through the voiceover-casting.com site but Mahmoud is not directly involved with that site. Mahmoud’s pages contain an ever-growing list (about 140 listings as of this writing) of voice over casting resources from around the globe including voice talents, agents and resource sites. It’s a very nice collection and I believe he welcomes submissions so check it out.

As for his pitch, it could not have been more personalized and pleasant in his approach. The kind of introduction/request that I assume most PR folks are not making to other bloggers on a daily basis.

The morale of this story then is if you have an idea for a blog post but are not sure what to do with it, wait 24 hours or so…the blog fairies may drop a little bloggers magic on you to help you finish your post.

Tags: blogs, commentary, marketing, voice talent, voiceover 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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Yes, I know. There are clients who want service and prospects who want to place orders and one must keep their business humming lest someone else steal our clients.

Stop. Listen (or – read).

I am the biggest culprit of diving for the phone but a phone call I had today just reminded me that I need to improve on this.

Don’t answer the phone if:

• You are in a meeting. You are only going to say ‘I am in a meeting can I call you back?’ Besides the caller feels bad for having interrupted your meeting. We didn’t know you were in a meeting. If it’s a real emergency, we’ll find you anyway.
• You are with a client or prospect. Focus on who is in front of you – they need your attention the most at that moment and if you are taking calls from others, what does that say about how you prioritize the client or prospect sitting before you?
• You are with your family after business hours. Oh, there are no business hours any more, you say. Look, I am so guilty on this one as to be the poster boy but I need to get better at it and so do you! Work to Live, don’t Live to Work! Work Smarter Not Harder! Pick your slogan. I’m trying out Family First!

Shame on me for needing a slogan to remember anyway.

Tags: commentary, marketing, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I was doing some email blasts this week and sorting through my various databases, one of which is LinkedIn. Unlike a lot of social media tools, LinkedIn allows users to download the contact information of those you are directly connected with so you can communicate with them outside of LinkedIn.

As you might expect, a fair amount (but hardly all) of my contacts are voice talents. This email blast wasn’t for them so I was sorting them out by title out of my LinkedIn database when I came across an interesting pattern.

Many professional voice talents do not include the terms voice talent or voice over talent in their title on LinkedIn. They say things like “president” or “owner”. My guess would be that they also don’t do this on their business cards as well, though I can’t prove it. They are probably relying on their company name to tell the whole story.

This strikes me as a missed marketing opportunity. Here’s why:

1. Always be accurately introducing yourself to the world – If you’re a plumber, tell the world so there’s no mistaking it; same if you’re a voice talent. Leave very little room for interpretation about whom you are professionally…people like clarity, especially in job titles. It’s just the way it is.

2. Always remind the search engines who you are – In organic search (the search results that aren’t paid for and just come up when you input certain words) you can never be sure how people are going to come across your personal brand or business. Anyone of your social media or pay-to-play web site listings could come up….consistency in your title could be helpful for the keywords in your organic rankings

3. Always be helpful to people doing database searches – Outside of my example, people do search their databases in a number of ways and for a number of reasons. One of them could be to find all the voice talents in their database to pick a voice. While it’s up to the user to decide what title they ultimately type in, you need to help them with a suggested title right under your name on your business card.

As for me, I’ve always had the best of both worlds because I am a voice talent and I provide a casting service for female voice talents and international voice talents. Peter K. O’Connell – President/Voice Talent.

Does this make sense or do you think I’m full of beans? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

Tags: commentary, linkedin, marketing, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Just got home from a nice day with the kids – errands, the park, play and only minor meltdowns…mostly theirs. It was a very nice day as we came home from a day of fun.

In the mail was a bubble envelope with a demo CD from a person promoting his voice over services. I wasn’t immediately familiar with him…I meet and talk with a lot of people each week so I was a bit concerned that I had asked for a demo and didn’t remember making the request. I don’t think that’s the case here. But should it be a case of my 40-heimers combined with toddler-induced brain dripping kicking in on me, I’ll apologize now.

Nope, this here was one of them un-so-licited type demos, pardner. And except for what I felt was a sincere attempt to market himself as best as he knew how, I’m afraid this wanna-be voice talent fell woefully short.

I don’t want to embarrass him by outing him (OK, it’s a guy; that cuts the suspects in half). My point is not to hurt or insult…but this screams to be a teaching moment for voice talents everywhere because the mistakes (plural) here in this envelope are textbook on how the underprepared should not present themselves as professional voice over talent until they are really ready.

He was so not ready.

1. The demo sucked
On a positive note, the audio quality on the demo was clear. The vocal tone was not unlistenable. That about wraps it up for the “positives” column.

The negatives include 10 full commercials as individual demos; three of which I bothered to listen to. Like any producer, I pretty much knew all about this guy’s performance abilities and training after the first 15 seconds of the first cut.

Each cut sounded exactly the same. A confectionary spot, a Mother’s Day spot and a car dealer’s spot…the reads, the inflections (when there were some) were about a half step above monotone. Music? Sound effects? No, not for this fella…just a ton of breath sounds (Mrs. audio’connell pointed that out and she never comments on those things). Oh and each cut included a weird clip of some audio not related to the demo spot just before the real demo began.

If this guy was professionally trained (and I don’t think he was) that voice over trainer should be flogged with wet string cheese. So should his demo producer.

2. Branding, branding, where for art thou branding?!
This gentleman has a perfectly fine domain name for voice over; this domain seems to be his brand. That’s a positive.

The fact that there’s no consistent typeface or icon that unifies the domain name/business name on the CD, the CD case, the business card and the mailing envelope says to me he was having fun with Microsoft Word Art in the same way a first grader might in a computer 101 class. It looked amateurish which matched perfectly with his demo.

Maybe he meant to have a microphone as his logo. Among all the collateral he included, I counted three, no four different microphone types pictured with clear outlines of where they were cut and pasted. (Sigh!)

This is basic blocking and tackling here folks and this fella clearly never made it to a team practice. I’ll let pass the fact that he spelled my company’s name incorrectly in two spots on the envelope. I suppose he could have repaired that damage in his customized cover letter to me, had he included one.

And the hits just keep on coming…

3. Making claims he can’t back up
This voice talent who sent me this unsolicited kit claims within it that he “writes great ad copy” in addition to his “voice talent”. Well let’s put that to the test, shall we?

Which would you select as the most successful tag line if forced to choose?

• “Captivate – Grab Your Audience”

• “A Unique Voice for Unique Times”

• “Get the Attention You Need Now”

Aw heck, let’s live on the edge and just throw the whole mess in as tag lines/slogans. That’s problem number 1. A “great ad copy” writer understands that there has to be one key, salient marketing message the reader or listener needs to take away from an ad or collateral piece.

Now maybe this part is more subjective than objective but, see, I either want to “captivate” or “grab” my audience since these two words pretty much mean the same thing…a few strong words usually have a greater impact than a lot of mediocre words.

“A Unique Voice for Unique Times”. Well, we’re in a recession so does this mean his voice matches the economic climate (a downer) or that he’s the voice for the new poor?

As harsh as all this may sound in its critique, this is how decision makers – the ones that don’t immediately trash a whole kit like this – will think about this person’s voice and brand and they are right!

Advertising, marketing and creative directors and producers notice this stuff. They are the final judges and no talent can afford to fail in any of these categories because there are so many quality voice talents who DO train, who DO produce a listenable demo and who DO create a sharp (not necessarily expensive) look and feel (full of well written copy) with their collateral that will catch the ear and eye of key decision makers.

It’s absolutely OK to have a desire and dream to pursue a voice over career but that chase does not start with a slapped together CD featuring poor, clearly untrained performance wrapped in the marketing equivalent of the Sunday comics!

Pretend for a minute you owned a business – that wasn’t voice over related – and your business’ expensive and important “make or break” marketing campaign required professional audio. Under those circumstances, who would you rather hire: just a “voice” or a voice over professional?

We all make mistakes, me too. Perfection is tough but very good is attainable.

Based on what I saw and heard today in this package, this poor fella has his work cut out for him. It’s not insurmountable but it won’t be easy either. Nothing worth doing ever is, I guess.

Tags: advertising, announcers, branding, commentary, commercials, marketing, voice actors, voice casting, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I do enjoy the dust up of opinions caused by the discussion of Social Media and Social Networking and how to use it from a marketing perspective and from a user’s perspective.

There’s….

“The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread” Tribe

“The Social Media/Networking is a Total Time Suck” Tribe

“The Occasionally Dip My Toe in The Water” Tribe

…and the always popular

“Prove It To Me” Tribe

There is always a few with such strong opinions (usually negative) that I get a kick out of it. Make no mistake, I myself do not shy away from strong opinions while also knowing that when I issue absolutes, I risk a little egg on my face.

As usually, I’m always the odd man out as I belong to the…

“Social Media/Networking is a Part of My Overall Marketing Mix” Tribe

Ours is a small tribe made up of folks who actually write and live by a marketing plan that has objectives, goals, targeted audiences and measures against it.

Some in our tribe do not use Social Media at all…but they can still be in our Tribe and not the “Time Suck” tribe because they have reviewed – not unilaterally dismissed – Social Media tools and decided it doesn’t work for their marketing objectives.

Smart marketers, whatever their business, adapt and study a changing landscape. Today’s change includes understanding and usually adapting to having Social Media and Social Networking as a part of the marketing mix.

The Social Media marketing mix is like an old family recipe – you make up the ingredients and portions based on some basic assumptions. A cake will need things like flour, eggs, water etc., but you may decide to add a little bit more of this or that or bake for a shorter or longer time than is standard.

With Social Media and Social Networking – it’s like an internet cake. Basic ingredients include having a free account on the most popular Social Media outlets: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, FriendFeed. Again, it’s free – the worst that could happen is that you get some SEO love from your account if all you ever do is set up a basic informational profile.

Then, if you want to dig deeper, you can figure out how these services and others (like blogs, podcasts, video sharing) might or can benefit your marketing objectives. Because your time is valuable, part of how you assess the marketing value of these tools is to decide how much time you can and are willing to commit to their execution. Time is as much a marketing expense to a business as the actual layout of cash.

If the answer is yes – we/me should do this and I can do this – great, carry on. If the answer is no, it doesn’t fit with our objectives and budget (primarily time but also possibly money) – great, carry on. In both cases, you really studied what you need to know about the tools and compared them to your marketing objectives and made a smart business decision.

You were not simply dismissive!

It seems simple but that process is a fail for many small business people because their busy-ness (not their business) helps them to avoid learning new things and ultimately they seem resistant to change…they enjoy the comfort zone of the familiar.

To them I wish nothing but a comfortable and obviously unplanned snooze.

Tags: branding, commentary, facebook, internet, linkedin, marketing, social media, social networking, twitter by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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