Exclusive footage from RAB 2009!
Due to a scheduling snafu, a Radio Advertising Bureau official has just informed attendees that my 90-minute presentation will be cut back to only 45 minutes.
This scheduling problem was something over which I had no control, and I apologize to everyone who was disappointed by the abbreviated presentation.
This exclusive video footage begins just after the announcement has been made.
October 1994 (continued):
Upon arriving at the hotel in Seattle, I pulled my luggage cart onto the escalator to take me from the street level up to the lobby area. Just I reached the top, the straps to the cart somehow became undone, and my suitcase, tote bag and computer tumbled all the way down the escalator. (No one was hurt, and my belongings did not seem to be damaged.)
As soon as I got to my room, I went to sleep. The next day began early: At 6:30AM, Eric Kirchner picked me up and drove me to KCMS, where at 7:00 I began an air talent seminar for the staff there.
We ended at 2:00. Eric drove me back to the hotel, where at 3:00 I conducted THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MANAGEMENT for the Public Radio Program Directors’ Conference.
As I began the 2-hour session, we heard loud noises coming from the other end of the ballroom, which had been partitioned off into two sections.
It turns out Kenny Loggins was going to perform there, that night…for some other convention. This was his crew, conducting a sound check.
The hotel was completely unsuccessful in getting them to stop the noise, which made it very difficult for both me and the audience to concentrate.
This situation did, however, lead to my best remark of the trip. At one point, the sound check guy kept repeating into the microphone, “Duh…Duh…Duh…Duh…”
To which I responded, “Oh, isn’t that cute. Kenny Loggins is practicing his ad-libs.”
(I like Kenny Loggins, but his crew had not been given permission to use the room then, and everyone thought they were quite inconsiderate.)
After my session, I grabbed my bags, gobbled down some happy hour food, and returned to the Seattle airport. I flew to San Francisco, changed planes, and caught the red-eye to Washington D.C. The flight was sold out, so I spent the five hours trying (without much success) to sleep in a tiny seat between two big snoring guys.
Upon reaching Washington, a limo was waiting to drive me the hour or so to Gaithersburg, Maryland, where Ozzie Sattler had arranged for me to conduct a seminar for managers of the Group W radio stations. To my delight, when I entered the hotel lobby I encountered Paulette Carpenter, who handed me my room key. (Checking in can be almost as exhausting as getting there.)
I slept for two hours, ate breakfast, and went downstairs to conduct the seminar.
As soon as I was finished, the same limo drove me back to the D.C. airport, where I caught a plane to Hershey, Pennsylvania.
On the following day (Sunday; my trip had begun Thursday evening) I conducted a full-day version of my AIR PERSONALITY PLUS+ seminar for Rich Wyckoff and the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters. Nearly 200 people attended. The big turn-out added to the energy of the seminar.
As soon as it was over, a couple of the attendees drove me right back to the airport, where I caught a flight to Chicago and then another one back home to Los Angeles. The box score: Four different seminars in three states in two days.
Harlan Hogan has decided to teach a month-long series of teleseminars devoted to just one topic: Starting Your Own Voiceover Business: Everything You Need To Know To Turn Your
Dream Or Your Sideline Into A Business.
Why?
If you think he needs the money, you’re mistaken. He’s been pulling down a steady six figures each year for 32 years — as he says, as a talker, not as a teacher.
He’s doing it for two reasons:
1. He’s seen too many promising careers flame briefly and then disappear because the voice actors concentrated on voiceover jobs or even voiceover careers…but not on building voiceover businesses. If you spend all your time trying to land an audition or win a gig, you’re missing the big picture. Harlan is a Big Picture kind of guy.
2. Over the past couple of years he’s become really upset over what I have dubbed “Voiceover Puppy Mills”: companies that sucker people in to free or inexpensive “workshops” and then follow up with each person who attended: “You have what it takes to make it in voiceovers! You must sign up for our multi-thousand dollar ‘master’s class’ immediately!
I knew there were some fake voiceover gurus out there, posing as successful VO performers, suckering people into “continuity programs” where the naive student pays $X per month — forever — to be part of an inner circle of other would-be voice actors. I’m quite familiar with that business model. Heck, I can tell you who invented it.
But I didn’t know about the hucksters who pitch their tents, separate the local yokels from their precious cash, and then move on to the next sucker town.
For a couple of years now, Harlan has forwarded me the various snake oil pitches that have come his way.
Result:
Now I’m angry, too. So when he asked me to assist in putting together a series of teleseminar classes that tell the truth, offer real-world information and tools, and can steer serious voiceover professionals away from “hope careers” and toward voice acting businesses…It was easy to say yes.
Harlan talks about those rip-off artists in much greater detail here.
This is a Sushi-ish restaurant in a strip mall in Los Angeles. I like Sushi. I like Japanese food. But I’ve never gone into this place, because I’ve never been able to see what it looks like inside.
Is it tiny? Spacious? Tastefully decorated or unappealing to the eye? Lots of happy customers inside, or is it empty?
Who knows? They’ve covered virtually every viewable inch of glass with pictures and posters that are intended to “sell” the restaurant but which in reality discourage new customers from entering.
Drives me crazy every time I see it.
What Does This Have To Do With Radio Advertising?
A good radio commercial offers the listener a “test drive” of the results offered by the product or service. When you clutter up your spot with bells & whistles, jokes, and extraneous audio, you obscure any potential consumer test drive.
You probably haven’t noticed — theoretically it’s possible for you not to spend your every waking moment thinking about me — but despite today’s economy I’ve been doing more “stuff” than ever.
Why?
Because if everyone around me is cutting back while I’m doing as much as — or more than — ever, I get a lot more bang for my buck.
This hardly is my own keen insight into the world of marketing. It’s conventional wisdom:
“We have a philosophy and a strategy. When times are tough, you build share.”
— AG Lafley, CEO, Procter & Gamble
Probably you’ve tried to explain that to your clients. If not, you should.
But if you do, you also should “walk the walk.”
If your station or agency has halted all expenditures in training and R&D, you really don’t have the right to preach to potential advertisers the value of continuing to reach out to the marketplace while their competitors are sticking their heads in the sand.
I’m just sayin’….
