Happy Labor Day! Hope you had a great summer season and life is getting back to whatever your definition of normal is. Over the years I’ve noticed that voice talents have four seasons too, but they’re a bit different…
New Year’s: for most it’s making resolutions they’ll never keep and paying off credit cards from all that holiday shopping. For us it’s deciding which new demos to produce and gathering all those receipts for tax time.
Summer (which starts on Memorial Day): for most it’s hitting the beach and getting their boys summer cuts. For us it’s trying to book automotive ads and figuring out which agents will be out of town.
Fall (which starts on Labor Day): for most it’s getting that last beach weekend in and shopping for school clothes. For us it’s letting our clients know we’re available to narrate Christmas commercials.
Winter (which starts on Black Friday): for most it’s holiday shopping and booking their flight to Grandma’s house. For us it’s seeing how many marketing campaigns we actually had time to pull off and pray they worked.
Watching the seasons pass reminds me how different a voice talent’s professional life is from your typical 9 to 5’er. The challenge for many new talents is making adjustments when it comes to time management, specifically “season management”. We have no one looking over our shoulder every day to keep us on task. We have no one telling us it’s X time of year and we need to do Y.
TIP OF THE WEEK
Figuring out what you as a voice talent needs to do at certain times of the year is not a simple task. You need to determine what voiceover genres you tend to work in and whether there is a correlation between that genre and certain tasks that need to be accomplished. For example, if you narrate a lot of cartoons, you need to know when the TV pilots are being cast, who is producing them, and the protocol for being considered for work.
From a marketing standpoint, is it a good idea to do a postcard mailing just before Memorial Day Weekend? Probably not, because everyone is trying to finish projects and get the hell out of the office for that long weekend so they may toss your postcard or let it get buried in their Inbox.
Know your industry and be prepared!
HAPPY HAPPYS!
Happy Teddy Bear Day and Iguana Awareness Day!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Don’t worry. It’s a killer. The damage is done. Have a giggle. Live for the now. David Helfgott from the movie “Shine”
From my village to yours; this is Tom Dheere, GKN News…
Tom Dheere is a 19-year veteran of the voice over industry who has narrated thousands of projects for clients in over a dozen countries. He is also a coach at Edge Studio, voiceover business consultant known as the Voice Over Strategist, and is currently writing & producing the comic book “Agent 1.22”.