As every business owner in voice over, marketing or advertising has either used public relations for their benefit or their clients’ benefit or has been on the receiving end of a PR campaign at some level, I thought you’d find the recent experience of Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch interesting.

He received this email very recently:

From: Vanity Fair / Google
Date: August 27, 2008 9:06:32 PM PDT
To: Michael Arrington
Subject: IMPT: Google/Vanity Party Status
Reply-To: demconventionparty@google.com
Thank you for your interest in the Vanity Fair / Google Party.

We have reached full capacity for this event and are unable to accommodate additional guests.

If you have NOT received a Confirmation email–separate from the automated RSVP response– and a Party admission card with your name on it, you will not be admitted to the party. No exceptions.

If you HAVE received a confirmation email but have NOT picked up your admission card, you must reference your confirmation instructions and pick up your card by 4:00pm on Thursday. Admission cards will not be distributed at the door.

If you use the shuttle service you must have your party admission card to board. No exceptions.

Thank you in advance for your understanding,

Vanity Fair & Google Events team

Sad news for Michael, had he been wrangling an invitation or had he even been aware of the event. He had neither nor was he the lone perplexed recipient of that email.

But he did write about it….and so am I.

I’ll let you draw your own correlations between a publication the likes of Vanity Fair, celebrities and politicians (and please post them here as I know they’d make great reading).

My questions (which I also hope you’ll daine to answer) are the following: is any publicity really good publicity as the old axiom goes? As long as they spell my name right?

Maybe the publicity trick fits Vanity Fair’s branding but does it fit Google’s? Obviously the message is exclusivity but is it also awareness? Would you be willing to pull such a stunt (and make no mistake, this is a stunt) with your brand? Why?

Please open your blue book and use only your No. 2 pencil to write your essay answer. You have one hour.

Begin 😉

Tags: advertising, commentary, google, marketing, media, public relations, voiceover // 2 Comments »

I’ll, of course, do my own voice over for all political commercials.

Tip of the hat to Ann Hackett from aHa Designs for the link.

Tags: commentary // 1 Comment »

Kudos again to the team at Common Craft…simple, clear, effective.

Tags: commentary // Comments Off on how to use google reader

Here’s why I ask the question (and we’ve kinda talked about this before but bear with me here): a couple of times on sites like LinkedIn or in general research, I will type in a company’s specific name and hit search.

When a company’s web site doesn’t show up on the first or second search pages (especially if it’s not a generic name) I mentally dismiss the company as somehow inadequate or less than successful.

To me, their name is a vital and basic key word that should get some play early on in the search process but it doesn’t sometimes.

I realize that there are many companies who are successful who don’t yet use the internet very well, but my expectation is that a modern, successful company will have at least a modest web presence that should show up pretty quickly on Google or MSN or Yahoo.

Am I expecting too much? I am putting too much stock in Google? Have I become a technological snob? Will some companies (and individuals) just not let go of the phonebook? Or are some companies woefully undervaluing what a successful web presence means to their branding and their sales.

You have to talk me through this. What do you think?

Tags: advertising, commentary, google, internet, marketing // 11 Comments »

If you look to the front page of the audio’connell Voice Over Talent web site, next to the title “audio’connell breaking news” you’ll see that popular orange RSS icon. I put it there at a cost of thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours but this is what I am willing to do for you, my valued readers.

Ahem, well, maybe it cost me a little less than that but Mother always said to me it’s the thought that counts and my Father always said hyperbole sells.

Ahem, well, while Mother may have said that “thought” thing my Father never got really hyper about anything…a very calm man, he.

The point is when we publish a new press release, if you have subscribed to that news feed, you can receive it right away. For those of you still unclear on the whole RSS thing, note the “what’s this?” link next to the RSS icon, which gives you the lowdown on RSS.

Now some of you are subscribers to voxmarketising (and thank you again for that) and you’ll notice that we also reprint these media releases here (in more of a social media release-like format). You too can subscribe to the news feed (as they are separate feeds) or just read the releases on the blog as we will continue to post them here too.

We now return to our regularly scheduled blog, already in progress….

Tags: audio'connell voice over talent, blogs, commentary, internet, technology // 2 Comments »

In a little over four months the branding of International Voice Talents into its own entity has gone well. We’ve picked more jobs every month with some great voice talents situated around the globe. Most especially, its been fun!

But we still need more quality international voice talents who have their own studios. Are you the talent we are looking for or do you know someone who is?

We’ve got some areas where I would like to offer a few more voice choices for clients such as:

• Arabic – male and female voice talents
• Chinese (Cantonese, Mandarin and Taiwanese) – male and female voice talent
• Danish – male and female voice talents
• French Canadian – male voice talent
• Hungarian – male voice talent
• Italian – male and female voice talent
• Japanese – male and female voice talent
• Korean – male voice talent
• Portuguese – male and female voice talent
• Russian – male and female voice talent
• Spanish – female voice talent
• Thai – male and female voice talent
• Vietnamese – male and female voice talent

If you are fluent in these languages and English and have your own studio, contact me here and I will follow up with you.

Maybe you can add your name to the growing roster of talents on International Voice Talents. Thanks!

Tags: commentary // 1 Comment »