Marketing and Goals
- November 27, 2009
- Comments (0)
Voice Over Expert Bob Bergen chats with you about "Marketing and Goals" in this wonderful podcast lesson. Bob stresses that the first thing you should do is set your goals. If you are generic or non-specific with your goals in marketing, your results will be generic and non-specific. Start with backward thinking and see where it takes you! Enjoy this whirlwind tour of how you can go from identifying a goal to the steps you need to realize it.
Download Podcast Episode 107 »
Transcript of Marketing and Goals
Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voiceover Experts brought to you by Voices.com, the number one voiceover marketplace. Voiceover Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voiceover. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voiceover talent. It's never been easier to learn, perform, and succeed from the privacy of your own home and your own pace. This is truly an education you won't find anywhere else.
This week Voices.com is pleased to present Bob Bergen.
Bob Bergen: Hi, this is Bob Bergen and today I'd like to talk about Marketing and Goals. One question I ask my students in my animation voiceover workshop is, "What are your goals?" I would say, nine out ten people will say, "I just want to work", and my response to that is, "Well, who doesn't? Everybody wants to work". I think one of the problems people have in pursuing voiceover is their goals aren't specific. Where in voiceover do you want to work? Animation, commercial, promo, trailer, narration, interactive games, audio books. Now the day to day activity in voiceover is commercial, so the commercial then probably the most important. Each genre of voiceover requires a tone demo. One thing people today have that I didn't have when I was pursuing voiceover is video voicebank. Got a video voicebank and you can take a listen to everybody's demo. The top actor is represented by the top talent agencies.
But let's talk about setting goals. By virtue of a demo you're telling the world that you're as good or better then everybody else represented or working today. So, if you're generic or non-specific with your goals on marketing the result are going to be generic and non-specific. So, how do you make your goals and marketing more specific? Well, in pursuing voiceover most people do forward thinking. It's starts with, I'd like to get in the voiceover, so I should take a workshop and you know maybe make a demo and see if I can break in a voiceover. Well, there's a huge gap between that demo and working actor that most people kind of ignore, so instead of forward thinking let's do backward thinking start with the ultimate goal you might have.
Let say that ultimate goal is to be a promo network announce for a major television network, so here's backward thinking. You're now the voice of CBS comedies. How to get the job? You're tested for it. How you test for it? You get a call back. How to get the call back? You had an audition. How to get an audition? Your agent sent you. Had your agent send you? Because on of your initial goals was to be a promo voice for a major TV network when seeking representation, you specifically marketed to those agent who's clients do a lot of television promos. How do you find that agent? Did some research on video voicebank and through that research and listening to working actors promo demos, you contacted these actors but because most voice actors have a websites these days, bobbergen.com and you pop them a note, pick their brain. Ask then how they got their start, who they studied with? Where they get their promo demos done, etcetera and from that research you'd probably hear names like, Marris Debias, Joyce Castellanos or some of the other top promos instructor in the business and you study. You study until you're ready to make that demo and you don't make that demo until you're absolutely ready because every listener will give you one opportunity. One bad demo can ruin an entire relationship.
And through your research on video voicebank, you'll notice that each demo is as individual as the actors are. Nobody in this business needs another voice. They need you. What you bring to the copy? Your personality, your style, your sense of humor, your brand through training and workshop, you need to establish your brand, so the buyers know who you are. They know your brand and when they have a property that matches your brand. It's a marriage made through auditioning. So, I've kind the jump the gun a little bit but let's go back to the backwards thinking. How did you eventually get that agent that deals with promos? Well, through your studies and networking and marketing and contacting and hopefully you're also brilliant at this promos voiceover thing. You should have enough experience and enough people who know you and your ability and know your work, who can refer to an agent. Probably the best way to get representation is through an industry referral.
And oh by the way let's say you went on the first promo workshop and you realize, I'm over my head, I'm not quite sure what I'm doing here. Your green, your brand new, you've never done this before. You might want to consider improv classes and or acting classes before you spend a dime on voiceover classes because it's all about acting, it's all about what you do with those words. The script is a skeleton. You have to give it a body. What is the body? The body is your band. When your band is instinct, when you can bring your brand to any piece of copy without spending a lot of time consistently that's when you're ready for that demo, until then save your money. The business will always be there.
So, I kind the jump all over the place but the bottom line is backwards thinking. Think about that ultimate goal, think high, think big because you aren't specific, if you don't think big, your network, your support system, your representation, they're not going to think big for you and keep this in mind, they hold audition everyday because they need talent, they need new talent, you just want to have want it more or be willing to do more than everybody else out there and for every genre of voiceover that you're looking to get into, do backwards thinking whether it would be audio books or commercials, animation, interactive games, narration, etcetera. Think backwards. It makes the goals and the journey a lot clearer.
This is Bob Bergen and there will be more podcast for me. If you'd like check out my website at bobbergen.com, pop me and e-mail at bob at bobbergen.com and if you're interested in any of my weekend animation workshops just pop me a note, I'm all over the country. Until next time and thanks for listening.
Julie-Ann Dean: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this Voices.com podcast visit the voiceover expects show notes at Podcasts.Voices.com/VoiceoverExperts. Remember to stay subscribed.
If you're a first time listener, you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple iTunes Podcast Directory or by visiting Podcasts.Voices.com. To start your voiceover career online go to Voices.com and register for a voice talent membership today.
Tags
Bob Bergen, goals, marketing, demos, BobBergen.com, voice overs, voice acting, animation.
Links from today's show
Your Instructor this week
Bob Bergen has been a working voice-over actor for over 25 years. Since 1990 he's been honored to be one of a handful of actors who share voicing the classic Looney Tunes for Warner Brothers, including Porky Pig, Tweety, Sylvester, Jr., Speedy Gonzales, Marvin The Martian, and Henry Hawk. Bob's voice has been heard in movies such as Space Jam and Looney Toons: Back In Action, to television's Tiny Toon Adventures and Loonatics, to The Six Flags theme parks, toys, commercials, games, recordings, and more. He's an Annie Award nominee for playing Porky/Eager Young Space Cadet in the twice Emmy nominated series Duck Dodgers.
Other credits include dozens of animated features, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Iron Giant, Toy Story 2, Shrek 2, The Emperor's New Groove, Cars, Finding Nemo, Spirited Away, Surf's Up, and Food Fight. As a promo announcer he's been heard on The Disney Channel, FOXKids, NBC, KidsWB, FX Networks, and CBS. Bob is the branding voice for radio stations throughout the country, as well as hundreds of commercials for such companies as Albertsons, H&R Block, Mitsubishi, Baskin-Robbins, Geico, Red Bull Sprint, Welches, Expedia.com, Jack in the Box, United Airlines, and Petsmart, to name a few. Bob is also one of the most in demand animation voice-over instructors in the US and Canada. http://www.bobbergen.com
Any comments for Bob? Add your thoughts!
Preparing to Record a Commercial Voice Over Demo
- June 26, 2007
- Comments (10)
Join Voice Over Expert Bob Bergen as he guides you on "Preparing to Record a Commercial Voice Over Demo". Learn how to choose materials, build in variety, and promote your commercial voice over demo once it has been produced.
Download Podcast Episode 03 »
Tags
Bob Bergen, Commercial Voice Over Demo, Preparation, BobBergen.com, voice overs, voice acting, commercials.
Links from today's show
Bob Bergen
Making a Voice Over Demo
Voice-over demos and a Eureka Moment
Listen to Voice Over Experts on YouTube
Bob Bergen : Recording a Commercial Voice Over Demo
Transcript for "Preparing to Record a Commercial Voice Over Demo"
Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voice Over Experts brought to you by www.voices.com, the number-one voice over marketplace. Voice Over Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voice over. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voice-over talent.
It's never been easier to learn, perform and succeed from the privacy of your own home and at your own pace. This is truly an education you won't find anywhere else.
Now for our special guest.
Bob Bergen: Hi, this is Bob Bergen and I want to talk about the voice-over demos. The demo's your calling card. It's equivalent to the picture and resume for an on-camera actor. I can't tell you how many times a voice-over actor will call me up and say, "Hey, listen, I'd love to take your voice-over class and I'm in the process of doing my demo."
And I'll say, "Why are you doing a demo if you're still studying?"
They'll say, "Because I want to work." Well, it's the other way around.
In fact, I think the voice-over demo is not only your last stop in this journey of pursuing voice over, but if you make it too soon, you're not going to get a second listen. My personal opinion is: Take acting classes and improve classes first and then study voice over.
A voice-over class, for the most part, is not an acting class. It's teaching actors voice-over technique. Too often, people spin wheels in a voice-over class because they don't know basic acting technique. They're making guesses instead of choices.
So, with a solid acting foundation-be it Meisner or Stella Adler or Strassberg, I don't care what it is-with solid acting training, you're going to get more out of a voice-over class. And you'll be more prepared for your voice-over demo.
There are several different kinds of demos; you've got your commercial demo, your animation demo, your promo demo, trailer, narration, etc. The most important demo is the commercial demo. That is the one the agents will listen to first.
Nowadays, demos are on CDs. Most agents are asking for an MP3 email submission on demos, but you're best to call the agents before you submit to find out what they'd like. As I'm researching my book on voice-over agents, I'm finding they all have different opinions but, in L.A., most of them are asking for MP3 submissions.
Commercial demo-one minute, folks. That's it. If they don't love you in four seconds, they're not going to love you in four minutes. They're really only going to give you about a 4-10 second listen.
The thing that's most often missing from an actor's voice-over demo-they might be great actors, they might read well, they might know how to interpret copy-but the one thing that might be missing is who they are, their heart, their brain.
And, by the way, that's called branding. It's your brand, just like McDonald's is a brand, Burger King is a brand, and you're voice-over style, your personality- that's your brand. And if you can't reflect that brand in your copy, you're not ready to pursue it. You're still in the study stages.
What this business doesn't need is another voice. They've got all of the voices they need. What they do need is you, your personality [and] what you bring to the copy that makes it unique and makes it your own. If you can't do that with a toilet paper ad or a McDonald's ad, then you're not ready to pursue voice over; you're still in the workshop stage.
This is the hardest part of the whole journey-being real, being organic, being you. If you go to www.voicebank.net and you listen to some of the top commercial voice actors in the country-if you listen to Rob Paulsen, if you listens to Jack Riley-you will hear the people that would meet on the street if you were to meet them. You'll hear their cadence, their personality. You hear them-that's what you need to do with your voice-over demo. And if you're not, you're just another voice that they don't need.
I don't recommend writing your own copy, unless you're a copy writer. Magazines, print ads [are] the best place to find commercial copy.
Make sure that you produce your demo with somebody who produces commercial demos; that's what they do. Not somebody with a really cool studio. Don't do it yourself to save money because you're going to get one listen per person. If they pass on you, it's very difficult to get a second listen, so you want to make sure that your demo is brilliant. Not good, not pretty good, not OK-but brilliant because it's the brilliant ones that get noticed.
When you're a working voice-over actor, the spots in your commercial demo are actual spots and they come from different sources. They might come from a CD. You might get them off of TiVo, etc. There's a variety from spot to spot because they were all recorded from different studios with different microphones with different engineers in different-sized rooms. And frankly, you, the actor, were in different moods. You need that same variety in your first demo.
This is the producer's job. Your producer needs to mix each spot like it were done in different environments. You can do one spot from about here and [changes microphone position] do another spot from about here. That's the same microphone. It adds a geographical variety that makes you sound more versatile than you really are.
You don't want stock library music unless it's contemporary and it reflects today's commercial market. Just because a studio has 16, 000 sound bytes, doesn't mean they're appropriate for a demo.
And if you're making a demo, you're competing with the big boys, so there's no such thing these days as a first demo. Competition's too stiff, there's too many people out there. So, you don't have that opportunity these days to make that first OK demo and then a year or two later improve on it because people have very, very long memories. They remember the bad demos, so you really want to make sure you're ready.
How do you know you're ready? When you don't ask yourself, "Am I ready?" You just know. It's instinct. It's as second-nature as brushing your teeth; you just know how to do voice-over copy-how to deliver the copy in an organic way that reflects your personality, your heart, your brain.
Keep in mind that my advice on anything is on the Los Angeles point of view-I really don't know markets outside of L.A. That said, I think no matter where you are in the country, if you approach your voice-over career with a bigger-city marketing point of view, you're bound to be one step ahead of those in your market who aren't approaching it in the same way.
So, even if you're not in L.A., Chicago [or] New York, use those cities as a marketing template for your voice-over career, as well.
[music]
Julie-Ann Dean: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this www.voices.com podcast, visit the Voice Over Experts show notes at podcast.voices.com/voiceoverexperts.
Remember to stay subscribed. If you're a first-time listener, you can subscribe for free to this podcast in the Apple iTunes podcast directory or by visiting podcasts.voices.com.
To start your voice-over career online, go to www.voices.com and register for a voice-talent membership today.
[music]
Your Instructor this week
Bob Bergen has been a working voice-over actor for over 25 years. Since 1990 he's been honored to be one of a handful of actors who share voicing the classic Looney Tunes for Warner Brothers, including Porky Pig, Tweety, Sylvester, Jr., Speedy Gonzales, Marvin The Martian, and Henry Hawk. Bob's voice has been heard in movies such as Space Jam and Looney Toons: Back In Action, to television's Tiny Toon Adventures and Loonatics, to The Six Flags theme parks, toys, commercials, games, recordings, and more. He's an Annie Award nominee for playing Porky/Eager Young Space Cadet in the twice Emmy nominated series Duck Dodgers.
Other credits include dozens of animated features, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Iron Giant, Toy Story 2, Shrek 2, The Emperor's New Groove, Cars, Finding Nemo, Spirited Away, Surf's Up, and Food Fight. As a promo announcer he's been heard on The Disney Channel, FOXKids, NBC, KidsWB, FX Networks, and CBS. Bob is the branding voice for radio stations throughout the country, as well as hundreds of commercials for such companies as Albertsons, H&R Block, Mitsubishi, Baskin-Robbins, Geico, Red Bull Sprint, Welches, Expedia.com, Jack in the Box, United Airlines, and Petsmart, to name a few. Bob is also one of the most in demand animation voice-over instructors in the US and Canada. http://www.bobbergen.com
