Thank You

I couldn't help noticing that it was October 12th when last I blogged. All blogging Gurus tell you to blog at least 4 times a weeks for good mental blog health. Well gee. We've been busy. The dog ate my blog. Martians landed and stole my blog. I was sick. My blog blew out the window and was last seen headed west on I-80 on the windshield of an '87 Yugo. Alright, you caught me. Only a couple of those excuses are true. But mostly the one about being busy. And to that I say....thank you. Thanks to all the clients that kept me off the street and kept my nose to the grindstone. Thank you for trusting us to produce your audio. Thank you for not giving me the time to embarrass myself on the golf course. It was a wonderful October. And truth be known, I hope I don't have time to blog much in November either. Oh, and should that occur, let me be among the first to wish you Happy Thanksgiving. Because if business continues the way it has, we shall certainly have much to be thankful for. Now get back to having fun, thanks for reading and we'll leave the mic on for ya.

Casual Familiarity

A young lady was in to do a voice demo just the other day and I was trying to explain how to interpret the script. I went through all of the old "directions"..."read it as if you're talking to your best friend"..."you're only talking to one person"...you know, the classics. Then on my way home last night, it hit me. When doing voice work for commercials, even non broadcast, it's vital that you establish that "CASUAL FAMILIARITY". It's the practice of talking to people as if you've known them all your life.

You can do this in everyday life too. When you answer the phone, when you greet people on the street, whatever it is you need to say, whoever it is you need to say it to, just treat them like you would your brother or sister or favorite uncle. Okay, so you're fighting with your entire family, how about that best friend of yours?

This is the true key to success at voice work. Of course you still need to be able to actually say all of the words in the script, but if you establish that "CASUAL FAMILIARITY", you'll be far more successful. Besides, it's really fun to say. Thanks for reading and we'll leave the mic on for ya.

Words, Yes Words Are All I Have...etc and so forth

It occurs to me that there's nothing in the world as important as words...and how you say them. Honest, the right words said the right way makes all the difference. Try this experiment on your co-workers or friends or total strangers today. When you see them and you get the predictible "How are you?", reply with "better now that I've seen you". You might even go so far as to add "You're a ray of bright sunshine on a cloudy day". Just see how they react. If there's not a smile, try saying it with more sincerity.

I could go on about how the wrong words are just....well, wrong, but that's another blog. What words do you use to bolster other's morale? I'll give them a try around here. In the meantime, remember...everyone else's mood affects yours and you're just helping yourself when you go out of your way to make them feel good. Thanks for reading and we'll leave the mic on for ya.

Read the Classics

Through the years, I've discovered a few things about myself. One is, I'm lazy. No, really. Given the choice between catching up on paperwork and playing golf? No contest. Make that phone call or watch a movie? Does anyone else smell popcorn? I found out a long time ago, that I need help on the "motivation thing". My half hour commute each way is the perfect time to put in that book on tape that gets my mind going. Over the years I've listened to such motivational speakers as Brian Tracy and the like. One I'm listening to again right now is Dale Carnegie. Yeah, really. I'm a man of the new century and I'm listening to one of the motivational icons of the last.

It's fun. Honest, I think it's because the examples used in the audio book are so....last century. These are situations that just wouldn't happen today. But the underlying truths are as relevant today as they were seventy years ago. How to deal with people, how to stop worrying, how to make a mouthwatering souffle. Okay, so I made the last part up. My point is...we all suffer from "Gee, I'd rather be goofing offitus" and there's help in the form of motivational books on tape. Worth every penny you might care to invest, but also available at your local library. Remember the library? It's a building with books and entertainment that you can borrow for weeks on end for free. Ahh, but that's another blog.

If you're already listening to some books on tape that might get me performing up to my potential, I'd love to hear about them. Let me know. In the meantime, thanks for reading and we'll leave the mic on for ya.

Okay Fine, I'm Back

I can't begin to tell you how much fun I have on vacation. There's just something so completely liberating about hitting the open road with only vague destinations in mind. This year, we knew we needed some mountain time, but didn't decide until the very last minute whether we were headed for the Rockies, or the Black Hills. Then Wednesday, before we left on Friday, I had a vivid dream of standing in a tourist trap holding one of those cheap plastic snow globes of Mount Rushmore. Guess where we went?

Anyway, we had a wonderful time and have learned some valuable lessons. Number one being, no matter how much vacation time you take....it's just never enough. Now, I was thinking it had to do with getting older, but then remembered how I felt at the end of Summer as we were getting ready to head back to school as a kid. See....never enough. If we, as advertising types, could find a way to bottle that wonderful feeling of getting ready to leave on vacation, we'd all be high on life all the time. And sure, we'd be rich.

So get to work. How do we recreate those magical memories of life? Or at least write with the passion and genuine joy to get everyone thinking about the product or service we're trying to promote. Because we all know, the spots that are best at making an "emotional connection" are the most effective. You're the genius. I know you can do it.

Thanks for reading and we'll leave the mic on for ya.

Smile, You're on.....

We've just taken a giant step back in technology, and it's wonderful. When we first opened the Radio Garage back in 1990, one of the first things we bought, right after microphones and mixers and recorders and such, was a Polaroid camera. Every client who came in was photographed and put on the "Wall of Fame". To this day, people still pause when they come in to see all of the pictures still on that wall. At our ten year anniversary, we even had a collage "Poster" made up of dozens of those pictures and people still love to look at it. There's a picture of a much younger Jay Leno and I on one of those occasions when he came to Des Moines. We love to play America's fastest growing game..."Find Jay Leno". It really does take awhile, since his hair was still black and he was much thinner. There are also polaroids of John Ratzenberger in the studio, Bob Dole, Merlin Olson, past Iowa Governors Terry Branstad and Tom Vilsack, well suffice it to say we have a lot of dignitaries up there along with countless clients and friends.

Well, a few years back, in an attempt to keep up with technology, we scrapped the Polaroid for a digital camera. We have folders full of digital pictures and have even printed quite a few off to add to the wall. But you know what? It's just not the same. Maybe it's the tactile pleasure of holding that unique Polaroid paper, or the fact that the picture is right there and you just can't wait for it to develop so you can see what it looks like, or maybe that it fits so neatly into most of the acoustic foam used to deaden studios, but we've gone back to the Polaroid. Now we're thinking of taking it one step further by scanning in the picture, making a postcard featuring that picture and send it to the client with a "Thanks for the Biz" message on the back. That way, they can start their own "Wall of Fame".

How do you thank your clients? I'd love to know. But if you don't have a plan to say thanks presently, I highly recommend the polaroid approach. It's great fun...and you know how I love fun. I promise to get that poster scanned and on the web site in the near future. Thanks for reading and we'll leave the mic on for ya. Oh, by the way, the picture is of Hollis Monroe and Mike Dunn. Notice the polaroids in the foam above them. (Just one of many "walls of fame".)

Who's In Charge Here?

Have you ever worked with a committee? I mean as a business, have you ever worked with a client "committee"? It's usually a group of people that have either volunteered for the project because it sounded like fun, or a group of people that have been assigned to serve on the committee because, well, they had time. It really doesn't matter how it happens, committees tend to be the devil's spawn no matter how they're formed. In a studio situation, we usually plan on doubling the project time when there's a committee involved, simply because each committee member feels that it's important to interject their opinion, important or not, informed or not, relevant or not.

Mike Meacham's favorite definition is: "A committee is a culdesac, down which good ideas are lured and quietly strangled". The only reason I bring this up is because I'm serving on a committee right now. It's a volunteer committee to help in the marketing of our small Iowa city. Early on, I mentioned that our most important task was to choose an advertising agency. Once that was done, the best thing we could do was disband and get out of their way. Honest, I said that very thing in one of our early meetings, probably a year ago. Everyone nodded and I, obviously mistakenly, thought that meant agreement.

Now, we've chosen an advertising agency and the process is underway and I'll be darned if the committee isn't still meeting. And yes, everyone has begun to second guess everything the agency has done and is complaining that they're not involved enough. So...the committee has become the committee I feared it would. Maybe that's just the nature of the beast, no matter what. Just like a kitten becomes a cat, a puppy becomes a dog, involved citizens become politicians, a committee just has to keep meeting and meeting and meeting long after its usefullness has ended. And that just guarantees that the process, no matter what it is, will take twice as long.

What do you think? Am I just becoming a cynical bitter guy, or do people let "being on a committee" just go to their heads? Hey, I'm more than willing to admit that I could just be totally wrong. But I'm guessing otherwise. Thanks for reading and we'll leave the mic on for ya.