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| Voice Actors and Audio for Brands
Four Days of Conferences and Studio Sessions -
July 2008 |
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 The advertising, branding, marketing, licensing communications community includes a diverse group of companies from the largest entertainment studios to sole proprietors marketing a single brand, in house brands or licensed brand products. At least for descriptive purposes the parties involved in such origination of a "brand" can be divided into a number of categories.
How you select your audio production house comes into consideration in your media production chain, as it can determine very specific outcomes on how the chain "adapts" your intent on the imaging for your brand. Not only for the visual content and context, but on how the sound, which always leads the way by two advanced "psychological frames" into your production imprint, is styled.
Why is it that the original Disney "Nine Old Men" said 'Place the soundtrack two frames ahead of the film frame to reach the back of the cinema house first'? It wasn't just the technology available at the time for the screen's light display to reach the "back of the house" compared to the speed of sound, which would take "two frames longer". It was also an understanding that for the emotional impact intended, the feel of story, sound would have first psychological manipulation on the viewer, conveying intention within the grabbed attention.
Between this and Tex Avery's style of animation as "exaggeration ", the first most dynamic cinema and broadcast animation brands were built.
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| Your Production Chain |
 All of the relevant people in the production chain tend to be involved with approving a voice talent for a project. You may well have "stylebook guidelines" which preserve the nature of the property being formed, to be forged and emulated in the society at large, generally monitored by the originating brand firm and its marketers or agencies. This diligent approval process benefits everyone, any licensees, and retailers too, since the better the overall image (audio or visual) for a licensed product is, or a created brand, the more able the property will be to drive sales for the brands' products. Looking at that picture - in choosing to use the web, wireless, broadband, traditional media or other networks - it's important to think of creating the integral parts of your media production, as a "web" to be woven that promotes YOUR brand across it's planned platforms. Not hit and miss, aiming mostly for the right people at the right time. You know that. Does your audio production or your video production house? Does your contracted production gun know who your key targets are? Are they bringing a broader sense of media communication to audiences to the table if you need them to? Or are they simply using the same desktop media that is now available to anyone and everyone, including your second cousin's son Norman, who knows how to convert an AIF file to a 3GP file in order to insert or embed your Flash file as mobility streaming media? Technical expertise aside, does your second cousin's son know what's making your all important target demographic, and even more important, it's 'psychographic' tick?
Do you contract your voice talent directly for production? How about voice casting services? If you're looking to build a block annual relationship with a signature voice talent who can build your brand the way it consistently needs to be conveyed, do you work with a voice talent agency that can procur and develop the right voice for the right reasons at the right time, and then assigns you options so that as your newest brand builds, you can have an annual assignment contract that means that your new signature voice talent is ALWAYs available for your brand, whenever you need it? FURTHER - is there a non-compete or exclusivity arrangement so that your signature voice talent will NOT voice any other competing products or services within that media usage arena? Carve outs? Is the talent and their agency in your camp, when you need it?
Would you like to place bets on whether your agency IS in your camp, at the time your brand is popping, after all your hard work of campaign development? What happens if the stakes are then raised, or IF, WHEN and THEN a new player comes on the scene in your same designated neighborhood or play area? There's a good reason to build your 'Top of Mind' Audio Team when you start your plans... not later. These are the things we think of here at Knight Mediacom - specifically. Because we've been on campaigns that started and then popped for a boom.
We love to tell the story of these little licensed products called Light Sabre Swords. (Insert SFX here: >shvvvzzz shvvzzzz!!!!< ) They were being manufactured in Australia for export to the United States in early 1980 at the time that this movie was coming out that involved a kid named Skywalker, and this large black nemesis of his. When long term planning was never on the books for a first time adventure which had yet to become an area including "licensed products", the studio had no idea of what was being built in a plant across the Pacific. A little first time "protectionist thinking" saved the day for that Hollywood studio as a lot of potential lost revenue was rescued from allowing these goods to enter the country on first time 'non-protected trademark" turf.
Okay, this may be an extreme example if you're simply building your brand locally, handling local media or a local event. It may not apply to what you do. Yet your audio visual team, spiced with a little bit of national networks media production background and plenty of intellectual property knowledge can be worth their weight in gold, long after your production has left the hard drives. |
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| Voice and Audio Brand Properties |
 When we think of lifestyle designs and brand impressions, we usually think visually, but these things are absolutely paramount when it comes to audio design. Your chosen audio persona has his or her own "top of mind" emotional impression and creates specific stimuli - within the ear-minds head-minds and heart minds of the listener, singularly and then combined as a demographic and psychographic target audience.
In the classic example of old media, a radio station works continuously to create, sustain, reinforce and promote its slogans, lifestyle appeal and community aggregation in the market. If you're an image creator in regional or mass market branding for your products or services, you know that you're not an immediate "station" or a "publisher" with your own designated identity to promote your stock in... unless you're posting to your own or your client's website. So for outside or traditional planned media, you have to in effect "create" that designated identity, carving it out of the mass market - aggregating the massive entangled weave of media outlets to target the communication of your brand(s), by researched target audience adoption of USP messages. Whatever that brand is, on the audio side and as a voice talent: be it announcer, voice actor, the 'effective communicator' chosen, you hope your voice choice applies or fits in to those specific matched audio brand styles that you're after. Do you have the time to hope that your voiceover talent is in sync with the calling, or can act it (you hope so...Yeah, that's it... we'll get it... we'll find it on site ?!?%$#). Can your talent put the audio signature sound stamp on the production at hand... RIGHT NOW? Take One? Take Two? How does this affect your finished production as you position your media for marketing? How does it affect your studio hours on your production budget? How does it affect the brand that you build for yourself as an agency creating a stylized portfolio for your ongoing client pitch submissions? That's a lot of questions, but since you're reading and we're still asking, here's the last question: "How does this affect your "extended marketing off-time" when you are not sending out finished production media, so as to reinforce your own "media brand" as the agency of record for your own 'personal station?' |
| Carrying the Audio Torch |
 In the 80's, when TV animation was in its well capitalized heyday, Toy Manufacturers learned that Saturday Morning commitments could "monopolize" the better part of the half hour, rather then solely producing 30 second spots. A case study reveals that even the Voice Talent was consulted on a manufacturer's move, in changing additional aspects of provided retail items to be "sold separately". Why? Because in creating so much of the life and persona for that Satuday morning prime time Toy character property, the owners of the toy brand would not merchandise any new thing until they'd asked the talent, who had created so much of that character which had leaped from the audio imagery to cell animation on screen, IF that item would be something that the character WOULD USE in its REAL LIFE! HELLO?!?!
So in understanding what and how a brand 'feels', how it is to be made the voice talent's own, and how they put the right stamp back on the brand, reflects how well they, and you, know the audio medium - creating reality from the mental created perspective, and how responsible everyone on 'your team' is in knowing your mission in the world of audio and soundtracks. Defining that difference makes the difference for your productions as 'the team' becomes a significant player in it's own right.
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Here' s some further info to contact us. If you're looking for Ron Knight as the Voiceover talent, local representation is with Nanci Washburn at Artist Management. He promises branding, quick, clever, caffeinated, and will get in and out of your studio faster than you can order lunch. Unless you're buying lunch. Then you won't get rid of him. But that can work to your advantage. Call or email Nanci and talk about some BIG DEALS. Or little ones - and we'll make a big deal out of it.
For studio production, Audio to Video, multimedia authoring, Motion graphics, Animation or Titles Services, block studio production bookings, feel free to call us
If for ANY Reason, all this talk about Voice Actors as Brands, branding teams, and how to nail your brand in the audio dimension is new territory for you, then you owe it to yourself to click in and sign up for our ongoing newsletters on Voice Actors, Audio for Brands;
If you haven't figured out where your brand production vendors and 'soulmates' are in the world of audio visual production, then YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF TO SIGN UP AND ENROLL AS SOON AS POSSIBLE - for RON KNIGHT's "VOICEOVER ARTISTS AS BRANDS - the seminar One Day Event - Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 in San Diego, CA. Exclusively limited to the first 80 participants, this one day alone will enhance the functionality of your studio production agenda, while putting you together with today's "on the cusp" voice talent services, media creators and producers. Offered as DAY ONE of the Four Day Voiceover Production Panels scheduled from Wednesday, July 23rd through Saturday, July 27th, on the water in beautiful San Diego on the Bay.
You can sign up for the one day alone, or take the entire four day events block, featuring guest panels from voice casting, commercial production, animation & character production, and noted industry guests. If that's you, our last question for your final answer is: Will you be joining us?
Please note Day Four: Audio for Talking Avatars and 3D Virtual Hosts: This is the newest technology on creating talking avatars and 3D virtual hosts for web, streaming and mobile media. We are proud to be pioneering and representing it for the industry here at Knight Mediacom, and you can join us for a One Day Workshop Seminar on the newest, most recent technology platform where Audio recorded FIRST, drives the 3D animation and creation of on screen visual hosts. This is truly the short cut to quick turnaround virtual human animation and short clip media! You'll learn it here FIRST, by joining us for this one day in-studio event. Exclusively limited to just 24 participants.
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Ron Knight
Knight Mediacom
Tels: 310 779 9885; 619 338 9885
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