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If you’re like me (and God help you if you are) you work and then you’ve got kids. In between you grab a sandwich and you sleep a few hours.

So taking time let alone money out for voice over seminars is costly on both fronts. This is why I subscribe to many blogs. I will set aside time in my workday to read because that’s another way to improve – not only within voice over but also social media, marketing and overall business operations. And it’s free, except for the time.

A prime example for me recently was a great performance reminder from voice coach Marice Tobias (friends and fellow VO’s Bob Souer and Mary McKitrick are just two folks who go ga-ga for Marice’s teaching insights). My light bulb moment came courtesy of Tracy Pattin’s VoiceBank blog.

Among the many Tobias nuggets in the post taken from a recent AFTRA Mastery panel: “Go Too Far.”

If you’ve been at all trained as a voice talent, you may have been told that before. If not, then that phrase may seem odd. But for me it was a great kick in the pants.

Me of all people, sometimes the loudest person in the room if not the world when I carry on in a humorous way, needs to be reminded to make a performance bigger, more intense, more subtle, more brooding, more obnoxious (scary I know). But in taking my performance further, I can see how that sounds – see how it communicates and then, if need be, I can pull it back. But I need to dare myself to make it bigger, to take the risk, to get out of my comfort zone. I forget that performance imperative sometimes.

The nuggets are out there and today I found mine by reading Tracy’s blog post about Marice’s comment.

What performance or business nuggets have you found recently and where did you find them?

Tags: commentary, kick in the pants, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Good Lord, what a week!

Starting off last Friday (June 26, 2009) I zoomed up to Boston for a heavy duty bit of marketing work at a client’s major trade show. So between that, client entertainment and trying to maneuver around all the celebrity corpses that sadly seemed to be falling everywhere, I didn’t have so much time to focus on V.O.

Sometimes you gots to follow da money!

But Saturday night I did get out to visit with voiceover friends in Boston who were so generous with their time when they came out for a Boston voice over meet up.

I am so energized by these meet ups (all SUCH talented people) and the conversations were so great that I didn’t want the night to end. Yet I knew my client responsibilities held a long day ahead on Sunday so I bid adieu.

My thanks to my fine and talented friends who shared their time and talent with me on Saturday. I am forever grateful to be in this business with them.

Tags: commentary, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover meet-ups by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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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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We’ve all heard tell and maybe even personally experienced the kindness of strangers in our lives and it often gives us hope for humanity. We usually quickly get over that hope but it was ours for a minute to savor. Kind of like hitting a great golf shot: reality usually sets in on the very next swing but we had that moment.

So finally after months of nit-picking the text to death (I formally requested nit-picking and damn near personally picked the thing to death) I published The Voice Over Entrance Exam yesterday.

Now obviously just posting a web site page isn’t enough to let people know it’s out there, besides, my marketing sensibilities wouldn’t let that happen so I relied on the kindness of weirdoes.

weirdo (weer*doh)
n. pl. weirdos Slang
1. A person regarded as being very strange or eccentric.
2. A deranged, potentially dangerous person.

To be clear, I refer to definition 1 not 2 here. As an example, I am a weirdo as are all my peers in the voice over profession. It’s really one of the qualifications for getting in the business, actually.

I’ve always been terribly fond of almost all my fellow weirdoes but today my appreciation runs deeper than I can articulate.

That won’t stop me from trying to articulate.

Since the book was about the industry and for use by those in the industry or wanting to be in the industry, I went to the industry in my marketing. And since the book was free to download, I used Social Media tools as my primary marketing channels because they too are free.

The following maybe a helpful “how to” guide you can apply to your business when promoting your product or service. Obviously, you’d have to adjust the audience (unless it’s the voice over industry). Also, it helps to have some established credibility with your audience to get more immediate support as outlined herein. It only took me 27 years to establish mine, but your mileage may vary. As always, enjoy the ride.

THE BLOGGERS
Step 1 was to get to the bloggers before the release. It was like a public relations story pitch except not that cheesy cause it was from me. Basically I let all the voice over bloggers know the book was coming out on May 5th, gave them an advanced copy and said offer any comments on the book as they saw fit (or ignore it too if they chose). But my feeling was to respect the primary on-line voices of the voiceover industry by giving them a first glance.

On the day of the book’s release, the reviews began. Ah, symmetry!

As of this writing, regarding The Voice Over Entrance Exam, the mighty Bob Souer (weirdo of the nicest kind and highest order) wrote on his blog: “In my opinion, Peter has written an excellent tool that should be must reading for anyone thinking about trying to do professional voiceover work.” Thanks Bob but now I feel bad because I’ve become required reading and that sounds like homework and I “disliked intensely” (as my Mother would say, she being opposed to the word “hate”) homework!

Over on Joe Szymanski’s blog, he thought “The title is spot on.” Thanks Joe, I kind of thought the title was cool too. It felt perfect when I thought of it and I was surprised as heck it wasn’t out there already. Score one for original thought, I guess.

Russ Renshaw noted with the release of the book that “A very cool and rare thing occurred on the internet today.” He called the book dense by which I think he meant thick and stuffed with knowledge, I think. Now if he had called the author dense there would be no arguing the fact. I sincerely appreciate the pub, in either case, Russ, thank you.

Always supporting the voiceover blog community, Stu Gray’s blog promises a full review of the book and knowing him it will fair and honest…that’s all I could hope for.

And the always prolific James Lorenz noted on his blog that The Voice Over Entrance Exam had “tons of useful facts about what to expect and how to proceed with a career in voiceovers.” Cool!

TWITTER & FACEBOOK
Glide over to Twitter & Facebook for Step 2 where I “teased” at about 9:00 a.m. ET on May 5th “Fun voice over announcement coming up from the Voice Over Workshop at 12:00 p.m today. And the word FREE is involved.” (the time when I had scheduled my web tools to go public with the book download page and media release on the web site news section and blog). While Stephanie Ciccarelli was kind enough to be one of the consultants on my book (and therefore knew what I was “teasing”) I was still gob smacked by her generous tweet that she “Is proud of her pal, Peter O’Connell. You’ll hear more about why today. Awesome! @audioconnell”. Very, very kind!

When I tweeted that afternoon on Twitter and Facebook: “It’s live and seems to be a hit: The Voice Over Entrance Exam…oh and its FREE” the response was totally a surprise. I expected, as with most of my tweets, followers would click the link to see what it was about. That would have been plenty good for me.

As burgeoning Twitter expert Dave Courvoisier (also a consultant on the book) noted in his Twitter-centric May newsletter (also released yesterday), a retweet is praise of the highest order. And I must say in totally honesty I was not expecting the retweets and was truly humbled that these great talents felt strongly enough about the book to share it with their followers. So my thanks to (again) Stephanie Ciccarelli as well as David Houston, Joe Rodriguez, Kara Edwards, Liz de Nesnera, Voices.com, Jamee Perkins, Justin Barrett, Linda Ristig and Terry Daniel via Twitter.

Over on Facebook, Kara Edwards again, who likely used some FriendFeed-like aggregator, offered her retweet garnering a very kind response from Amy Snively. If women liked me this much in high school I might not have ever left! But if I hadn’t left I wouldn’t have met John Luttrell, a respected radio programmer (yes there are still some out there, thank God) and a friend from my WVUD-FM days who sent a nice note via Facebook as well. Erik Sheppard also plugged the book has his daily notice on Facebook.

MEDIA RELEASES
Step 3 would be old school PR with a new media twist of an electronic media release to targeted outlets. It may be a day or before I see/hear any payoff from that activity but again – no tree or postal worker’s back was harmed in the use of this marketing tool (i.e. it was free).

PROFESSIONAL NETWORK
Step 4 would be direct communication to the voice over community that has reached out to me over the years and whose names have grown exponentially in my address book. Now there may be an oops in this one as the link to The Voice Over Entrance Exam web page doesn’t work for some but most I guess just copied and pasted the address in their browser tool bar and the page worked fine. Nice to hear from Caryn Clark, Tom Donahue, Chip Joel, Dan Hurst, Kitzie Stern, Bobbin Beam and Alexis Williams (“I’m so glad you did this book!”).

ON-LINE FORUMS
Step 5 includes communicating to lots of voice talent out there who I either haven’t connected with in real life or via social media. So I made sure to post the media release about The Voice Over Entrance Exam on Rick Party’s Voiceover Universe which in just over a year has taken on a life of its own. My voice over home away from home, D.B. Cooper’s VO-BB has a “Learning” section and I posted a link in there as well.

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
Step 6 involved uploading or emailing the media release to the web site of the professional association I have memberships with like MCA-I; they have news modules on their sites and some produce paper newsletters and they now have my information. Look, association newsletters and e-zines need content too!

SUMMARY
Was all of the effort worth it? My goal was to make as many people as possible aware of the book so that hopefully they will find it interesting and download it.

On May 4, 2009 I had 24 visitors to my web site.

On May 5 as of this writing I have had 148 visitors to the site and 105 of them went right to The Voice Over Entrance Exam page. So I’m guessing since it’s free, the book has had over 100 downloads on its first day. With all that link love and promotion, the book brand and the audio’connell brand got lots of web time too…the outcome of that has yet to be determined but I’m guessing much good can come from it. Stats for today won’t be up til tomorrow, I think they’ll be good too.

Not a dollar was spent promoting it (except for my time, which does have value) and hopefully lots of people benefited from what I (obviously) think is good information.

My respect for my fellow weirdos grows by the minute. Thank you friends.

Tags: advertising, blogs, commentary, radio, voice actors, voice talent, voices.com, WVUD 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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With thanks to RadioJingles.co.nr (a blog to which I subscribe…Google Reader strikes again 🙂 there is a great link to a really well done video interview by voice talent Nick Parker of NickParkerLive.com. Nick interviews Dave Foxx, long time Creative Services Director at Z-100 (WHTZ-FM/New York).

I don’t know Dave (save for his voice and production skills) but what impressed me most about the interview was the “thank you” conversation at the end of the video. If you enjoy radio imaging, this vid is cool to watch…if you want to know what separates the pros from the wanna-be’s check the end of the video.

Dave Foxx has exactly the right attitude.

Tags: announcers, commentary, radio, voice actors, voice talent by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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