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My New Automotive Retail VO Demo

Tom Test New Automotive Retail VO Demo     In the 1990’s, I did some monthly VO for a local car dealer. It was all very hard sell stuff – “club ‘em over the head and grab their wallets” is how I described it. It was sort of a guilty pleasure for me to do that style of work and I was very good at it.   But then one day, another regular retail client of mine (a sporting goods chain) dropped me as his voice. He had heard my hard sell auto dealer work on the local AM news radio station and told me “I don’t want my client being associated with that sort of thing.” My work for his client was so...
POSTED ON: June 6, 2013     CATEGORIES: Blog, Demo

Armin Heirstetter interview, Part 2

Getting More Voice-over Work in Europe: Interview with Armin Hierstetter of Bodalgo.com, Part Two   TT: How can we tailor our demos to suit the needs and tastes of European talent buyers? Most American narration voice-over demos from the major markets (LA/NYC/Chicago) are about 60 seconds, have 4-8 clips of 6-12 seconds length each, usually with sophisticated music tracks and production values. Is this what your talent buyers need and want?   AH: Talking about non-custom demos I have one word for you: KISS. Keep It Short and Simple. In an ideal world you’d have a set of standard demos for different types of jobs, for...
POSTED ON: November 23, 2011     CATEGORIES: Blog

Getting More Voice-over Work in Europe – interview with Armin Hierstetter, Pt 1

At the recent FaffCon 3 “unconference” (Sept. 23-25 in Hershey, PA), I was spontaneously moved to lead a discussion on “How American Talent Can Find More Work Internationally.” It is not a topic I am an expert on, but there was enough collective wisdom in the room that a great deal of useful information was shared. It became apparent that there are real differences in business customs, etiquette, etc., between the U.S. market and global markets.   Hungry for more information, I realized that the perfect person to give advice on this issue was Armin Hierstetter, owner of bodalgo.com. This is a European P2P online voice over...
POSTED ON: October 27, 2011     CATEGORIES: Blog

FaffCon 3: the Voice-Over “Un-Conference”

This weekend, I attended the voice-over “unconference,” FaffCon 3 in Harrisburg, PA, along with 100 other professional voice talents from the US and Canada, plus Scotland, Tokyo, and Australia. Now, if you look at the dates of my blog posts you will notice that I haven’t posted since April. Honestly I have been very busy with work (I’m not complaining). FaffCon 3 was just what I needed to get myself “unstuck.” It was THE best thing I have done to improve my business in years.   An “unconference” is a relatively new concept. Rather than having paid guest speakers (who usually have a book and DVD set to hawk…),...
POSTED ON: September 28, 2011     CATEGORIES: Blog

Working on Long-Form Narration Projects

I’ve been extremely busy lately, working on three large long-form narration projects. One is Project Management training for a large construction firm, another is materials to help prepare students for college and their post-graduation job search, and the newest project is narrating World Book Encyclopedia materials for web use.   One of the cool things about doing narration projects like these is how much I learn about a huge variety of industries and occupations.  I’ve learned a lot about ladder safety, accounting, how large contractors do business, even how to spot all types of insurance fraud.  After doing this for 20...
POSTED ON: March 4, 2011     CATEGORIES: Blog, Voice-over
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