The Big Secret of Reviewing Demos & Sizzle Reels

The Big Secret of
Reviewing Demo & Sizzle Reels

People who aren't used to hiring creative talent will often spend an inordinate amount of time looking for just the right voice, attitude, delivery or graphic for their project.  They hope to find an exact match to their own idea of what their bit should look and/or sound like.  The exercise ends up in frustration, because after reviewing hundreds of demos they still don’t find it. 

They never will. 

The key to looking at samples from people who work in the creative industries – designers, layout artists, videographers, producers, animators, voiceover artists and all the rest – isn’t in finding an exact match.  It’s about finding a spark. 

Often, I see requests for videos that look exactly like the one on some website, or for talent that sounds just like James Earl Jones, Denis Leary, and Mike Rowe.  As I read these requests, I can't help thinking that if they want James or Denis or Mike so much, why don't they just hire them, or get the producers who made the video?

Many of my colleagues won’t submit demos for these gigs because they know it’s unlikely they will be hired, and if they do get the gig it will be a difficult job.  Nobody can sound exactly like James or Denis or Mike.  Hence there will be endless retakes and loops, and after it all the client still won't be satisfied. 

The fact is a guy could have the greatest pipes in the world, but he'll never sound like James Earl Jones because God only made one James Earl Jones.  The same goes for any creative type -- there's only one Picasso.  Only one Fred Pagano, too.

The key is to analyze what it is you like about their work.  Until you know that, you’re not ready to review demos. 

James Earl Jones is deep and authoritative, not funny, edgy, sick or friendly.  He's a little scary too.  That's his specialty.  My old friend Denis Leary isn't deep-voiced, but he's edgy.  His voice portrays a coolness that’s touched with annoyance.  You get the feeling he’s tired of all the everyday BS.  Mike Rowe is friendly and honest.  Not scary, not edgy.  He's every man who works hard at his job.  You want to have a beer with him. 

But don't ask Mike Rowe to do Darth Vader, or ask James Earl Jones or Denis Leary to play with someone's poodle on a Ford commercial.  As Denis would probably say, the result will suck.  And interestingly, both Mike and Denis do spots for Ford Trucks, but they're totally different in concept and feel. 

So to find the perfect talent – whether to produce a video or a voiceover, first figure out what you like about some of them. Is it the sound of attitude, youth, experience, hipness, or honesty that you want?  Do you want a video with flashy lights and pretty colors, or one that solidly portrays the word bank?  Only then are you ready to review demos.   

Don’t expect to find an exact copy of your role model.  Instead, watch for demos from artists and producers whose work contains a spark that corresponds to your vision.  You may have to dig deep, but somewhere in the pile is the voice that says the word “banana” in exactly the same way you want to hear “Joe’s Fish Market.”  Somewhere you’ll find the video producer whose demo of a basketball morphing into an ice cream cone is exactly the same as your idea of a tuna turning into a toothbrush.  Reach out to these talents, because they're the ones you want. 

Then communicate.  Explain your concept, feel and attitude; the look you're going for.  Your artist will either get it or not.  If they don’t get it, move on to the next.  Eventually, you will find the producer who gets it.  When you do, you’ll be on your way to a production piece that sparkles. 

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Want voiceovers and videos that make you sparkle?

You've come to the right place:  Brown Cow Studios of Boston. 

Drop Fred Pagano a line to learn more.  Fred@BrownCowStudios.com 

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Thanks for reading.

Your comments and links to this article are appreciated!

Have a great day!

Fred's Advertising Clinic Part 4: Build Desire

"Wow! I want one of those!"

"That thing sounds great!"

"Yeah? So what?"

Have you ever seen or heard a commercial on TV or radio and had one of those reactions? I have. A notable one happened just a couple of months ago.

I was watching TV, and a spot for a new sandwich from KFC came on. Well, it wasn't really a sandwich, because it had no bread. Just two slices of chicken with other good stuff in between. Precisely the kind of thing this manly man wants more of!

And when I saw that spot, my mouth watered.

I even remarked out loud, "Oh yeah! That's the stuff!...that sounds wonderful" I hope I wasn't drooling, but there's a chance I was. Ask my wife.

Was it a good sandwich? I can't tell you because there's no KFC near me at which to get one. But it sure sounded good when I saw that spot. I wanted one. A lot! And the next time I'm in the mood for chicken for lunch (which admittedly isn't often) I'll definitely get one. Because....

"That thing sounds great!"

Now what about the last reaction? "Yeah, so what?" I had one of those reactions recently too. I've long since forgotten what the product was, so don't ask. What do you expect, anyway? I should remember the name of a product I have no interest in? Life's too short.

A successful spot doesn't just grab your interest. It makes you want the product. It makes you want to install new flooring, have a beer, buy a new car, eat chicken or serve your kids yogurt. It gets your saliva dripping. In other words, it follows the fourth part of our five-part advertising formula: It builds desire.

How do you build desire for your product or business? Well, first think about your product. Who is it targeted to, who is your customer? What need does your product fulfill? Then ask yourself why your customer would want yours in particular. What sets it apart from the others? When you know the answers to these questions, you're on your way to building desire for your product.

Let's take a look at the example we've been using in this series, dry erase markers. A pretty boring product, so what can you possibly do to build desire for them? Think about it. Who uses them? Students and teachers in school, business executives giving presentations, and many homes have dry-erase boards in their kitchens so family members can leave messages. That's pretty much the market for dry-erase markers.

Let's zero in on business use. What would make me desire a particular brand of marker? Suppose it could help me win a promotion, or impress my boss. Or streamline work flow or make the job easier. Any product that fills one of those needs is desirable.

A marker that can get me more money and a promotion? I'll have to look into that!

On the household front, dry-erase markers help people keep in touch. They remind Dad to pick up Junior after the soccer game, or to grab milk on the way home from work. I want my household to run smoothly, and if dry-erase markers help do that, then I want dry-erase markers. Lots of 'em!

When it's time to write the copy, key in on those desirable traits in your product or business. Tell the exec how markers can help to win a promotion, or tell parents how they can run the house better. Be creative. Have fun.

Need to build desire for your product?

You can do it yourself. Or you can have Fred do it.

For spots that sell, come to BrownCowStudios of Boston.

Fred's Advertising Clinic - Part One: The Formula

Years ago I had quite a chuckle when I saw a poster on the wall of a friend's office. It read, "Mankind's greatest need is to edit another person's copy."

If you've written any sort of copy - from a business letter to a commercial to an article for a science journal - you get the joke. You might write the world's greatest copy (hmm ... sounds like me), but once you submit it to the client or your boss, it's torn to shreds (hmm ... how could they!). Maybe the edits are an improvement; perhaps they're not. The only thing we know for certain is that your copy will be edited.

People who run small businesses, as always, are up against a special challenge. Not only do they have to write their own copy, but they have to edit it too. With a limited budget for advertising time, it's especially important that their commercial copy gets results.

In this series we'll take a look at copy writing as both an art and a science, and explore some techniques for writing great copy.

Unlike many things in life, writing ad copy can be broken down into a formula. This formula has been used by professional writers forever because it works. Are you ready? Here it is:

Attention - Interest - Desire -Action.

It's known throughout the ad world by its acronym, AIDA, and it's a blueprint to effective copy. Just follow the steps in order.

1. Attention - The foundation of all effective ad copy is to get your listener or viewer's attention. So you write a catchy headline, or ask an important question. Amuse them, question them or shock them. How you do it doesn't matter as long as you grab your audience's attention.

2. Interest. Once you've got your audience's attention, your second step is to keep it and build interest in your message. In part, you're building on your attention grabbing lead, and you're setting the audience up for the next step.

3. Desire. This may be the most important step of all, because if you don't build a desire for your product or service, your audience won't want it. I find it's often the hardest part of the formula to write.

4. Action. This is the windup. It's time to get your audience to act, so tell them what they should do. Buy your product. Visit your store. Call for more information. Or cross only when the light is green. If you've done the previous steps well, that's exactly what your audience will do.

In principle it's a very simple formula. But some take years to master it, and others never quite do. That's where good copy writing becomes an art form.

Start practicing the formula now by applying it to daily life situations. Use the AIDA formula as the structure of your next letter or e-mail. Try it on your next sales call, or even with friends and colleagues in everyday conversation. Instead of just talking about last night's game over the water cooler, see if you can instill a desire to attend the next one or watch it on TV. Just follow the formula and see what happens. It's good practice.

Check back for the next article in this series, as we take an in-depth look at step one.

By the way, did you notice this article uses the AIDA formula? I'm sneaky that way. Thanks for reading!

Fred Pagano's Brown Cow Studios offers complete creative and production services. From great copy writing to creative audio production and lots more, let the creative herd at Brown Cow Studios of Boston help grow your business. Send an e-mail to Fred@BrownCowStudios.com, or visit our web site, www.BrownCowStudios.com.

Tell Us Where to Find You!

Here's a fun little exercise, and the results will surprise you.

Take a look at the circular from any major chain store that you've got hanging around the house. Maybe one that was mailed to you, or one from the Sunday paper.

Now see if you can find any indication of where the nearest store is located. I'll give you 2 to 1 odds that you won't find any locations listed at all!

The big box stores are the prime offenders, but the problem extends to department stores and smaller chains too. The stores seem to assume you already know (how? by osmosis?) where their stores are located. Personally, I find it aggravating. And from a marketing standpoint, it's foolish.

I get a circular in my Sunday paper every week for OfficeMax. They used to have a store a mile away, but closed it about two years ago. I like OfficeMax, but haven't shopped there since the local store closed. Why? I don't know where they are! But they keep putting a circular in my newspaper anyway.

If you're lucky, a chain store might, in its circular, provide a telephone number you can call to find its store locations. "Press 1 to find a store within 10 miles of your home; Press 2 to find a store within 20 miles..." Frankly, It's not a call I'm about to make.

I find this amusing: When a department store, and Macy's is a prime example, runs a sale there's always a section on the last page of the circular that lists all the exceptions in very small print - "domestics not available in Hanover, shoes not available in Brockton" and so on. It's written to satisfy the lawyers, not the customers.

With a little rephrasing that back page disclaimer could satisfy both the lawyers and the customers:

Hanover open daily 9-9 (domestics not available); Brockton daily 10-10 (shoes not available).

Wouldn't that be useful information?

If you're serious about increasing sales, don't forget to tell your customers where to find you!


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Coming Up Next Time: "Fred's Advertising Clinic - Part One"

Brown Cow Studios of Boston offers complete creative services

including copy writing, scripting, and advertising production.

Please visit our website at www.BrownCowStudios.com

If you're only talking for 30 seconds, why do I have to pay so much?

I was talking with a friend who is in the public relations business the other day. He's one of the most successful press agents in Boston, and specializes in getting his clients booked on TV and radio talk shows. As we compared notes, we realized we both faced the same obstacle: Clients who don't understand why our services are priced the way they are.

Not that we can blame them. To the uninitiated and those new to using the services of a press agent -- or in my case, a voice over artist -- it doesn't make sense. They wonder how a commercial that takes sixty seconds to do can cost so much to record.

A similar comment is one I used to hear back in my Top-40 DJ days: "I wish I had a job at which I only had to work four hours a day!" On the surface, it sounds about right, and believe it or not, there really are some DJs who only work four hours a day. But the fact is, they're not very good and they don't last in the business very long. The best radio personalities -- the ones who make it seem oh-so-easy have to work at it. And they work hard. The best don't put in a four-hour day, or even an eight-hour day like most of us. They'll spend hours preparing for their shows and trying to come up with new material. For the truly successful, it's more like a 10- or even a 12-hour day.

My friend the press agent? Sure, all he has to do is make a phone call to get his client booked, but again the truth is there's much more to it than that. He doesn't make one phone call, he makes fifty. And the only reason he can make those fifty calls is because before those fifty he made made 500 other calls to newspapers, radio and TV stations so he would know the producers and bookers, and what their tastes, interests, and preferences are.

Now since this blog is about voiceover production, let's take a look at what happens when a voiceover artist is hired to do a 60-second spot.

Even before the voiceover artist gets hired, he's already put a lot of work into the job. He's made phone calls to his agent, he's paid for and sent out demos, bios, postcards, letters, and maintains a web site too. He's probably called a few hundred potential clients on his own, and done every other kind of marketing he could think of. Along the way he's probably done fifty or sixty auditions -- maybe 100 -- that haven't resulted in any gigs.

Then one day the phone rings, or he gets an email from somebody who liked his audition enough to actually ask him to do their spot. They fax the copy over.

The first thing our voiceover artist does is read the copy to find out what it's all about. Then he reads it again, this time to get an idea of how the read should sound. Depending on the type of spot it is he may have to figure out who his character is, what his purpose is, even how he feels about it. In other words, he goes through the same preparation all actors go through when they land a part. But our voiceover actor doesn't have the length of a feature film or even a sitcom to develop his character and get his message across -- he's got 57 seconds, or even less.

He reads the copy again, this time marking it to note which words to emphasize and which to downplay, trying to find the most effective way to get it said.

By this time, he's read the copy five or six times, and hasn't even opened his mouth yet. But that's next. It's time to rehearse. Again he'll read the copy as many times as he needs to -- or, if he's working with one, as many times as the producer wants him to -- until it sounds right. So we're up to ten reads or more.

When the mike goes on, all that preparation hopefully results in a good read the first time. But, alas, that's rarely the case. Inevitably there will be goofs, mistakes, places where he rose in pitch when he should have gone down. Since he didn't write the copy, the words he speaks aren't his own in the way he would speak them, but in the way some committee somewhere wrote them, and he has to find a way to make that committee sound like one person with one voice, who's fluent in the English language.

If the recording is being done in a studio with a producer, engineer, and likely the client too, all of which are listening in on the session in the control room, our voiceover artist will have to follow their direction. Some of that direction may be genuinely helpful. Some of it may be arcane. "Can you make it sound like stardust?" or "put more electrons into it!" Hmmm ... electrons! More takes...

Eventually the tracks do get laid down and the recording session is finished. It's taken all day, and for his day's work the VO artist has earned $600. It may be the only job he'll do that week. If he's lucky, he'll get a check within 30 days as promised. If he's not so lucky he'll have to wait, track the client down, or maybe just not get paid at all. It happens.

So add it all up: The VO actor has probably read that script anywhere from ten to 50 times. And the money he gets paid has to cover all his administrative expenses and the costs of marketing, maintaining a studio, and going to auditions. Don't forget he has to pay his agent's commission too, if he ever wants to work again.

Do the math and you'll see that for all the effort to land and then produce that 60 second spot, our voiceover guy is lucky if he makes $10 an hour.

So why does he do it? Easy: He loves it.

Should you take advantage of a station's offer to produce your ad for free?

Just about every radio station, and many TV stations too, offer their advertisers free commercial production. To advertisers pinched by today's economy it's a very attractive offer that's hard to refuse. But should you refuse it?

I think so. From my years of experience in the broadcasting industry, I believe a very strong case can be made for declining the station's offer and instead using a professional, independent voiceover artist.

First, if your ads are being produced by the station on which you've bought time, your ads are being produced by one of the station's staff announcers. The voice will be one of the five or six people who voice probably 80 percent of all their spots - those of your competitors too! I'm not saying that the staff announcers aren't good at what they do; on the contrary, they're probably excellent. But your spots will end up sounding like every other spot on the station, and listeners will easily tune them out because they don't sound any different from everything else they hear. They'll just be part of the "clutter".

To be their most effective, it's very important for your ads to stand out and sound different from the rest. This is particularly important with 10- or 15-second "shorts."

Secondly, auditory memory plays a big role in the success of your ad. If a listener dislikes a particular personality for whatever reason - maybe they think those dulcet tones are too syrupy, or they don't care for the subject matter of that DJ's show (think of your local "shock jock"), that voice will have made an unfavorable impression. That impression carries over, subconsciously, to your product - it's quite likely that just hearing the voice of the announcer they don't like will work against you.

If you've ever found yourself talking back to the radio or arguing with a particularly annoying or stupid commercial you know what I mean.

But when you use an independent voiceover announcer, you're using a voice that's not heard every day - day in, day out for years. So your spot cuts through the clutter, is more likely to command attention, and won't suffer ill effects from a listener's auditory memory of an unfavored personality.

Many voiceover actors have spent years in training, taking acting classes, courses on dialects and accents and the like. The result is not just a "read" of your copy, but an interpretation of it. Even with relatively straightforward copy, professional, independent voice actors bring elements of drama, credibility, and showmanship to your spots. They don't get lost in the clutter.

In the end, your advertising is more successful because it commands the listener's attention and gets results.

Finally, there's the price issue. Free sounds great, but how much is that "free" actually worth? Most voiceover actors, myself included, operate their own studios and can provide complete creative services - from copy writing to voiceover to producing a finished spot at very reasonable rates.

You also gain the benefit of a professional who gives your spot complete attention and wants to earn your repeat business. Radio DJs and staff announcers don't get paid extra to do your spot, and they may not be happy about it either - it's just one more spot on the list of 5 or 10 spots they have to do that day, in addition to doing prep for their on-air show, paperwork, and the show itself. Because they simply don't have the time to give you their full attention, you might end up with a spot that's not great, but "good enough."

When you think about the total cost of your advertising schedule, the cost of choosing a a pro voice actor versus the station's "free production" offer works out to a small percentage of your ad budget. But the results a pro voiceover actor will get you are much greater!

So when the sales exec from the station offers you free production, tell him "no thanks." Then get in touch with Fred@BrownCowStudios.com, or one of the many fine VO talents working today.

- Fred Pagano