Here’s another video of over coach extraordinaire Nancy Wolfson, explaining why it’s important, when recording or auditioning for a TV commercial, to create your own “mental storyboard.”
If you can’t view the video player above, click here for an alternate player.
Often a reader of this blog will post a response that disagrees with something I said. (Unbelievable, I know.)
Usually I don’t offer a rebuttal, because the “Comments” feature doesn’t exist so I can argue with my valued readers.
But sometimes a comment does raise an issue that’s worth further explanation. Which is why I hereby launch this Friday tradition of Responding To Something Somebody Said Somewhere Else On This Blog At Some Time.
A radio station owner wrote:
“We encourage the client to be in the commercial for at least 3 seconds, saying their name and inviting customers to come see them. What happens is their friends tell them they heard them on the air…music to any advertiser’s ears.”
Yes, that appeals to the advertiser’s ego. But is that the promise you made? “Buy an advertising campaign on our station, and we’ll flatter your ego?”
I’m guessing that, instead, you are promising to help increase the client’s business.
Selling the radio advertiser a campaign featuring the client’s voice so that people will tell him they heard him probably is not in the client’s best interest.
It’s as though your doctor has told someone, “You absolutely must lose weight, or you’ll die of a heart attack,” and you sell the guy a pair of trick glasses that makes him look slimmer in the mirror.
A young radio jock asked me to comment on his aircheck.
A couple of my remarks might be useful to someone you know….
1. My biggest suggestion is that you infuse your delivery with a bit more energy.
I don’t mean you should sound hyped or phony, just a bit more intense.
It sounds as though you’re sitting back in your chair. If so, sit up straight and then lean into the mic a bit, tensing your stomach muscles (i.e., tightening your diaphragm).
That change in your physicality will increase the alertness and intensity of your voice because your body will be more alert.
Sounding casual is good; sounding bored isn’t.
2. When you’re talking to a caller on-air, your voice tone should alter to reflect that of the caller.
Do you use the same voice tonality when talking to your mother as when talking to your best friend, your girlfriend, or a prospective employer?
Probably not.
Is the caller excited, but you still sound completely laid-back? How about letting some of her excitement inform your own vocal delivery?
Is the caller whispering? Maybe you should respond in a more confidential, personal tone.
I’m not talking about “pretending” or “mimicking.”
I’m talking about establishing rapport with your callers and thereby making the conversations more interesting to your mass audience.
This is the 5th installment of a series of ruminations on radio copywriting that Dick Orkin and I began…uh, four installments ago.
"In Happier Times" — Dick Orkin & Dan O'Day
Most effective, “non-boring” radio commercials are wholly or partly autobiographical.
Ah, having heard that, are you making a false assumption that “autobiographical” means what you think it means?
I mean something else — something larger and more encompassing — when I say autobiographical.
When I say autobiographical, I don’t necessarily mean the details of your childhood and teen years, or your married or non-married life, or your work years.
Autobiographical includes that, but it also includes all of the people you’ve met and your experiences with those people.
It means situations that range from your first day of school when you wet your pants to the discovery you just made that you went to the washroom and, while washing, spilled water on your pants you-know-where.
It means the last harsh words you had with anyone today or yesterday and what happened to produce those words.
It also means your worrying, reflecting and ruminating on all of the moments I have just mentioned and many more I haven’t mentioned, songs you’ve heard, books you’ve read, people you have seen on the street — all of which you may have experienced consciously or unconsciously.
Maybe you assumed that these things aren’t really autobiographical.
Maybe this should be called “How To Watch Out For False Assumptions And Achieve Greatness.”
When your commercial is not autobiographical, I’ll bet it’s derivative as all heck.
By derivative, I mean creating a commercial you heard someone else do, or a commercial built around a great gag on Saturday Night Live, or a situation or character line in a play or movie you enjoyed.
How will you know you have achieved that autobiographical place?
Someone who once went to Paris to study French as a language said they knew they had mastered the language when one night they dreamed in French.
How will you know?
You will dream in commercials, that’s how you’ll know.
(To be continued….)
Final installment in this 5-part series.
Most radio people learn the basics…and then coast for the rest of their professional lives.
They have jobs, not careers.
Let’s face it: The technical demands of being an air personality are about on a par with driving a car. It just ain’t that difficult.
To have a career in radio and not just a job, you need to develop a mastery of performing skills.
But delivering the goods to your audience isn’t always enough to insure professional longevity — especially in this age of consolidation, voice tracking, and mass “downsizing.”
It also pays to promote yourself within the industry and to make friends within your profession.
I dislike the word “networking,” because it conjures images of spending all of your energy handing out business cards and looking to make “contacts.”
But having friends in the industry can be of immense help — for mutual support, inspiration, advice and, yes, even jobs on occasion.
