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marketing

How Copywriters and VoiceOver People Triumph over Disruption

blogs, Voiceover Business

Sipping nectar of the bean and browsing my groups this morning, I was inspired by copywriter chieftain Steve Roller and how many similar cliffs of insanity people in the copywriting and voiceover narration fields have to scale to triumph lately. All because of the (anti) buzzword of the decade “disruption.” That concept we all rallied around. Even got excited about. At first. Kind of like the frog, happy in a pot of water, lulled into complacency even as the heat rises and slowly cooks it to death.

Ad World Pre-Disruption

Mad Men work meme Kim Handysides VoiceoverWorking old-school copywriters and voiceover artists shared a formula. Client meets ad agency, creative team whips up with a concept, copy writer and art department, realize the concept and possibly come up with fresh ideas that client hadn’t thought of, embedded in his script and the production team would make it so. Typically this was when the voiceover artist was called, cast and invited to bring their expertise in enlivening that script and message. (In a perfect world) the client would sign off and approve. The message was delivered. It was a beautiful system. A simple system. And worked for over half a century. Then poof. Disruption. The tried and true took a quick trip to Hades in a hamper.

What happened? You could say it began with tremors in media buys. The Internet morphed into a true marketplace and spending on advertising splintered. No longer limited to billboards, print, TV and radio constructs, disruption in our industry included events and new media like pre-roll ads, YouTube, facebook, Instagram, etc. The problem? That same client advertising budget no longer enjoyed a 2:1:1 split between TV, radio and print, but flatlined into a ratio more like 1:1:1:1:1:1. Plus, many platforms with ground-level entry accessibility meant much greater competition for the traditional crafters of the message, (wordsmiths and voice vendors) to cut through the proverbial clutter.

Writers and Actors Scramble Mid-Disruption

So now we have a situation where we not only have to be more clever, more artful, more disruptive (sorry, not sorry) to abduct attention and help make messages heard, but we have to do it with lower budgets in shorter time frames, and without the dear old system in place that, frustrating as it may have seemed then, made our lives soooo much easier. Thanks Joni Mitchell. Never know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

Copywriters and voiceover actors are fumbling through these new frontiers concurrently. The work rarely walks through the door on its own anymore. We both have to seek and secure it.

Happily (for me), I have always been a pretty good small business marketer (for an actress). Perhaps because I played “ads” instead of “house” as a toddler and my first job out of school was in radio copywriting. But the universe more strongly steered me toward voice over work, and like water (or a bad smell) I followed the path of least resistance. So, VO. But, I took the time to build relationships along the way and did great work, and as an adjunct to my agent (which never brought more than 50% of my work), I annually updated and applied my own marketing scheme. Booyah. But gang? The last four years of my voice acting life I have never worked harder in sales and marketing to keep my salary constant. I guess it’s a bleep good thing I spent so many years perfecting my acting craft early on. If I hadn’t, I’d be even more frazzled, divided and disrupted than I am in this fun crazy new market. Ya feel?

 

floating city in sky Kim Handysides Voice Over
Source: Howard Fox

There is so much more work out there than there used to be, but not through the usual channels, so how the heck do you find it? And yeah, grumble, grumble, the bulk of it is in the lower price range. Whereas in the days of yore, salaries for both copywriters and voiceover actors emulated the floating island of Laputa (hard to access, but once you were there, the salary was high) the now-market has shifted to more of a pyramid. Lots of piddly-paying grunt jobs on the bottom, with fewer middle and upper plums for the career copywriter or voice actor to chew on as you climb up the obelisk. Although, I heard the ad market metaphor recently referred to as a flat pancake with a couple pimples, namely New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. I try not to dwell on the disheartening.

Mastering the Disruption

The answer, as Steve Roller suggested, is in marketing and sales. Isn’t it Alanis Morrisette-y that ad writers, creatives and commercial voice artists have been swimming in the center of marketing and sales, yet we haven’t had to actually do it for ourselves? In this brave New World, we need scramble hard, scale and mount the learning curve in B2B marketing, SEO, spreadsheets and lists, pay to play platforms, industry conferences, exploring and exploiting social media platforms… and sales (it’s not a dirty word). Actually getting up the gumption to ask for work directly instead of hinting, cajoling, suggesting or ”just putting it out there.” And you know what? It’s tough. It’s exhausting. It totally challenges your work-life balance. But when it clicks? It’s also exhilarating, freaking exciting, and imminently rewarding.

And there are new sideways opportunities. In my 20+ years of largely commercial voiceover work, I would never have occasion to recommend work to a copywriter friend. But post-disruption, it’s becoming my new normal. How weird is that? And that feels great. Because we all want to help out the good people we work with. We all want to get referrals and give them. To swim in these new waters it’s no more go-with-the-flow, but jump in, ride it, splash around, divert it, and most importantly be part of it.

No lies. I’m tired. It’s a poop ton of work. But dang, I love this part of my career. My own marketing and sales has led to really exciting unusual voiceover stuff. Like a Pepper Potts inspired AI promotion, poetry slam ads, lots of quirky (think: Flo from Progressive) long form story spots, Virtual Reality, apps… I’m sure you have a jambalaya of beautiful inspiring fun work you’ve been party to as well.

duct tape meme Kim Handysides Voice OverMy least favorite part in all of this newness, is the paperwork. K2 sized mounds of NDA’s, invoice & PO numbers and ways to receive payment to track. Yuck. Not my métier. But I can’t afford to be a whiner. No spoiled babies in this economic transformation. I’m curious to further explore the intersection between the pain points of copywriters and voice actors within the new reality.  Could we be closer? And  possibly get work with and for each other? What else might be fun and profitable partnerings within our work world. If you’ve got any ideas please post them in the comments below. K, enough rambling for today, I’ve got to slide back into my sound booth and bang out a couple of jobs. Ciao bella!

Kim Handysides is addicted to kombucha, her kids and Kiwi, her delightful Dachshund. Alliteration too, apparently.

Filed Under: blogs, Voiceover Business Tagged With: actor, ad world, advertising, commercial, copywriters, copywriters and voiceover, disruption, disruption in the ad world, home studio, long form story spots, marketing, mastering the disruption, new media, people, pre-roll ads, voice actor, voice over artist, voice work, voiceover, voiceover people triumph, voiceover talent, VR

How to Run your Professional Art like a Small Business

Voiceover Business

Business. The word alone used to send icy shivers down my spine. But, to be a professional artist, as in be able to write “artist” or “musician” or “dancer” or “actor” on your annual tax forms (aka more money coming in than going out) you must understand your talent or product IS your business. Perhaps it was my childhood, growing up lean, but I’ve always had a healthy respect for money and when I began cashing checks, I thought of my voice work/acting as my business. But when I began running my voiceover gigs like a small business, I noticed a huge shift. And took it to the next level.

 

I had the advantage of watching and learning from my husband who studied Commerce at McGill and ran a successful recycling business for a couple of decades. His bizzy side rubbed off on me and this is what I learned one should do to take on that small business mentality and apply it to your art/dancer/musician/acting business.

 

Kim Handysides Voiceover Run your Professional Art like a Small Business
Credit: Alexander Milo

 

 

Goals – set them.

Start long term and work backward to short term. What do you want to have accomplished 10 years from now, 5, 2, and in one year.  Break them down as much as you can by filling in steps you will need to take to accomplish them.

 

 

 

Business Plan – come up with one.

To create a business plan, you forecast what sales you will be able to make. This is part of your goal setting, but now you are putting it in another form. How much you will make in sales, how much you will reinvest in your business (skills, equipment, conferences, coaches, product materials, promotional materials, subcontractors, etc.) You create kind of like a budget, and estimate not only how much you’ll pay out and how much you bring in, but where your sources of work will come from, how you’ll budget your time, including whatever equipment/resources you need to make it work.

 

Sales – make them.

Kim Handysides VoiceOver Run your Professional Art like a Small Business
Credit: NeonBrand

Easier said than done? Sales goes hand in hand with marketing and its set of related tools you’ll need to create your marketing plans/materials. If you’ve never done sales before, it’s a great idea to either read up on it and/or make one of your supporting jobs in something like retail sales. You have a product (or service), your client has a need, you want to close the deal. It sounds so foreign to an artist, but when you substitute the words of our trade, it makes more sense. You have a song (or audition piece, or sculpture), your client (or producer or director or dealer) has a need (to sell your song, cast his film, showcase your work) and you want to close the deal. Make sure they pick you. So, you can make money at your art and then go make more of it. Closing the deal often involves more than your talent. It involves finesse. Respecting the other person’s position and time. Letting them know that a you understand there’s a bottom line to your work that you value. I asked one of my clients once why they regularly hired me as the voice over actor for their advertising campaigns, and they said, “Because we know you deliver the right read, in the time frame, on budget, every time.”

 

Marketing – make it reflect you.

Twenty years ago everyone needed to have business card. Perhaps business post cards. Five to ten years ago, to be considered serious, you needed to create a website. Even one page. The must-have now is a video on your website. That’s just so you can be found. There are social media sites to consider. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Pick one and make it yours. Don’t forget one-to-one marketing communications. People who market in the arts appreciate creativity. So have fun with your marketing plan. Although now somewhat out of date, a couple of decades back, in order to break into my local major market advertising agencies, I hired a fellow actor to accompany me Signing Telegram Style along with my commercial demo and complimentary coffee and chocolate biscotti. The theme was “listen to the demo on your next coffee break” and by the way, here’s some coffee and cookies to supply you with on that next break. The campaign was successful. We were never turned away. My client list went from 3 to 30 within a few weeks.

 

Kim Handysides VoiceOver Run your Professional Art like a Small Business
Credit: Anthony Intraversato

Financial Control – keep it.

Your dollars in have to be more than your dollars out. As an artist, one of the ways I have been able to thrive is to squirrel away money for the slow times. Learn about money so you can make what you have grow, and be smart where you spend it. My car is always second hand and that’s ok. It means I can afford the kind of vacation I want. I make my own coffee and pizza and reinvest in equipment, marketing materials, courses and coaches.

 

 

Discipline – develop it.

Yes, with your craft. Work on it every day. But also work on the more practical aspects. Your invoicing, your banking, your marketing, your taxes. Doing a little every day will avoid the spring dread and horror of a week to ten days of sifting through receipts and sorting out your tax stuff. If it helps, enlist a partner or group to help keep you on track. In my accountability group, we check up on each other and hold the rest accountable on 5 weekly goals: financial, craft, marketing, equipment, and physical (cause healthy body, healthy everything else, right?) Build yourself a schedule. A flexible schedule, if you like, but make it as unshakable as brushing your teeth or putting on deodorant everyday.

 

Start thinking of your art as your small business and acting like it is one and see if it doesn’t bring you greater returns, more joy and more time and love for your art and craft. And let me know how it goes!

 

A voice actor, coach and narrator extraordinaire, Kim Handysides loves expressive arts in pretty much any form.

 

Filed Under: Voiceover Business Tagged With: accountability, business, coach, marketing, narrator, professional, show business, small business, voice actor, voiceover

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