There comes a time in every life when a picture must be taken.

Unfortunately this time, it was my picture. I’m updating some of my marketing tools and they should have a decent (read: professional) picture as a part of them. I hadn’t had a professional picture done in about 3-4 years and that was more of a “shoot and dash” job (which honestly was fine with me).

But if one is going to market himself as the “Friendly, Neighborhood Voice-Over Talent”, one should probably look friendly if not neighborly in pictures, right? Plus I don’t have the goatee (this week) and that was in the last picture and oh well, let’s just get this horrible task over with.

See, I hate having my picture taken. Let me amend that, if its just friends shooting pictures, I’m fine with that. But on those very rare occasions when I am the subject, ick, can’t stand it. I get very self conscious and really don’t like that attention – which is why I don’t do on-camera

But bidness is bidnezz so a shooting we will go.

One of my friends from high school actually didn’t go to jail and in fact made a nice career for herself as a professional photographer. With the patience of Job, Lori Joyce (who not surprisingly owns Lori Joyce Photography) ripped the paper bag off my head and snapped some very nice shots. Then using her trowel tool in Photoshop, she covered up enough of time and nature’s mistakes to give me three very nice shots (she’s going to add these shots to her portfolio under the title “How Photographically Make Lemonade Outta Lemons – A Case Study in Fear-Provoking Portraiture”.

So YOU have to pick one. Here are the voting rules:

1. You may one pick one of the above choices – there is no 2nd or 3rd choice
2. The marketing message I want to get across in these shots is friendly, knowledgeable, established and maybe professional-but not like a doctor or lawyer. Maybe I should go with “not an axe murderer.” Yeah, try that!
3. There is not choice D. none of the above
4. Thanks

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My friend and fellow voice-over talent Diane Merritt is a special lady – she’s a talented VO pro, a great Mom and daughter. In short, she is one of the finest people I know.

Years ago, her dear Mom passed away from Alzheimers. Every deadly disease has its own special penalties- with Alzheimers, loss of memory and presence is one of the terrible plights for the patient and the family.

Since her Mom’s death, Diane has participated in her local Walk for Alzheimers event, raising money for the local charity’s chapter. She is aggressively seeking donations for this year’s walk in Greenville, SC which will take place on October 19, 2013.

With whatever financial contribution you can afford, I hope you will consider making a donation on behalf of Diane, her Mom and the thousands of people directly and indirectly hurt by Alzheimer’s Disease.

Thanks.

P.S. (I don’t make this request too often) For Diane’s fundraising efforts, would you please share this post with your personal networks on as many social media outlets ((Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc)) as possible?

Thanks again!

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Sometimes Voice-Over Talents are famous for good things and…sometimes not

Yes, that’s a picture of a famous person.

To respect her privacy and hide her identity, for this blog post, we’ll call her “Lisa“.

“Lisa” is a very famous and well respected voice-over talent and she’s – like I said – famous. She has a model-handsome boyfriend, she has a Westminster Dog Show champion dog, she lives in a mansion with a moat and burns dollar bills for kindling when her staff builds her a bonfire in her living room…just because.

She is beloved by millions including this writer.

Time magazine (yes, evidently magazines ARE still published, to be read in Dentists offices I suppose) just printed a fairly lengthy article seeking “Lisa’s” opinion on US-Russian relations, the economy, fall fashion trends and something or another about voice-over.

But the thing about “Lisa” that you don’t know (and that I do know) is that in spite of all her self-evident glamour and intelligence, she is perfectly normal. Having supped and lunched with her occasionally on her way up the ladder of success I know these three things:

1. She belches like a World War II sailor at the end of a shore leave in New York City
2. She also swears with the deftness of said sailor
3. She has an unnerving affinity, nay, love for extremely unattractive mesh trucker hats

You may be able to say one or two of these things about other famous, not normal people like Beyonce, Lady Gaga or Hillary Clinton…but not all three things.

Therefore, famous people are just like you.

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Dave Courvoisier (r) and two other voice-over guys on Las Vegas. August 2013

So I have seen Las Vegas.

And Las Vegas has seen me.

The Las Vegas strip is an interesting place but not one that I need to rush back to anytime soon, which may explain why it took me all these years to get to LAS. As I’m not much of a gambler or drinker…the strip doesn’t hold much interest for me and this time around, I didn’t have time to see any shows because of business commitments.

But what I held out hope for on this trip actually came true in that I got to visit with my friends and voice-over cohorts Dave Courvoisier and Dustin Ebaugh…and their lovely brides. My hope was we’d get off the strip and see some of the less touristy places in LAS and we did!

Obviously we talked about voice-over and Dave and Dustin’s work on WOVO and had a marvelous time talking about a ton of other stuff.

But here I want to make an observation that struck me for many reasons: one, it’s something I took for granted just because I knew about it; two because I’ve seen video of it and it seemed so easy and seamless that I, again, kind of ignored the greatness; three, because I was more focused on this individual’s very fine voice-over work.

The observation is this: Dave Courvoisier is an outstanding television news anchorman. Watching him work live on my TV in Vegas – seeing his promos, he’s fantastic. I know a lot of anchor people, including some in major markets. I know well that there is a lot of mediocrity in the local TV news landscape. That is NOT Dave. He is an outstanding communicator and that is not easy but it’s a critical television news skill. None of this diminishes his voice-over work and in fact, probably gives him an unfair advantage.

And Dustin, well Dustin is just plain sexy but that’s as much as I can say cause, you know, what happens in Vegas…

Seriously, these two families have very busy schedules and I was so lucky that they were both able to come out and show me that there is much more to the city and people of Las Vegas than the strip. Thank you seems like a kind of lame recognition but I mean it with all sincerity.

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To my shame, I’ve not talked about logos in a while. Most of you don’t share my enthusiasm for logos and you may have noticed over the years how I don’t care that you don’t care about logos like I do. You like scrapbooking and I could care less about that stuff. In this relationship, we respect our differences.

So logos- Yahoo is changing theirs as they try and reinvent themselves. Operationally, with a new CEO and new acquisitions, the word on the street seems positive. So the option of creating a new logo is not surprising.

What is kinda cool about this is how they are going to create a buzz about the change by throwing up a new logo on their site for the next 30 days. I’m going to guess that they’ve looked at probably 5x times that many logo designs since they began the process and these are the top 30. What a great example of how to use the internet successfully. This concept works for me on sooo many levels. Good marketing!

In September, Yahoo will announce their winning choice.

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I’ve mentioned before in this space about how I am usually a late adopter of most social media. Yeah, people think I’m all up in social media but I’m a pauper compared to zombies like Dave Courvoisier and Trish Basanyi, voice talents who are ALL up in social media.

(BTW, I’m not sure what “all up in” means…but awkwardly using urban lingo in unnatural contexts is a new branding ploy I’m testing to drive customers away…I’ll let you know how that goes).

So Sunday I got a ping that a voice talent named Jim Edgar had faved my about.me page.

My first thought was “thank you Jim.” My next thought was “what about.me page?”

To say I’d not spent much time on that social media page would probably be about right. I had written some stuff (more like copied it off my web site) but that was about it.

And by ignoring it, I also neglected to check my about.me dashboard which I now saw had all the nice things other people had said about my fairly barren page. People like Randye Kaye, Fran McClellan,KC Curriden, Christian_Rosselli and GWIII (aka George Washington, III!

But it was another GW, this time George Whittam who woke me about to what we all in VO SHOULD be doing with our about.me pages when I saw his page chalk full of cool info including a sound cloud demo.

Ah, stupid Peter, THAT’S how you manage an about.me page! Well, I’ll learn all this someday.

Have you heard anything about this new thing called Bookface or Facetwit or something?

P.S. (which not only stands for post script but also are the initials of the person I need to speak of for a second) I would be remiss (or remister) if I didn’t again thank Paul Strikwerda for taking the picture I am using as the main cover shot on my about.me page. So remind me to thank him sometime.

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