J. Michael Collins

New Talent Profiles: The Joy of Coaching

One of my great pleasures as a voice over professional is having the opportunity to coach and train other extraordinary voices. Whether they are working pros looking to polish certain delivery styles, or new entrants to this exciting business, helping these talents develop their skills, and book work, is one of the most rewarding parts of my job. Here’s a look at some new talent profiles I have had the pleasure of working with recently. I hope you will keep them in mind for your next project!

AMY WEIS amyweis.com

Amy is the original one-take-wonder. Her capacity for understanding the content of a script and getting quickly into a well-conceived character is remarkable. Her voice is centered in a wise and professional space but can easily range from young and bubbly to sexy and sophisticated. Amy will bring life to any script with a facility for both commercial work and various narration genres.

SAMUEL FLEMING ivoicetoday.com

Samuel’s voice defines youthful and fresh. With a style that puts you instantly at ease while simultaneously capturing your attention, Samuel can channel an under-30 sound that resonates with young people from all walks of life. If you are looking for a contemporary and energetic vibe, try Samuel Fleming for your next piece.

KIM HANDYSIDES kimhandysides.com

Kim is classical quality personified. With a voice as highly tuned and finely polished as they come, she’ll surprise you with her ability to transition from familiar tones to a modern conversational style on a dime. Kim owns every script she sees, leaving nothing on the table as she fully invests in making the words seem almost tangible. For guaranteed quality, Kim is hard to beat.

MIKE SCHURKO voices.com/people/MikeSchurkoVO

Mike is a rising star in the world of VO, with an incredibly bright future. Combining a hip, modern, and believable delivery, Mike adds a touch of earnestness and gravitas to selected reads that allow him to compete in almost any genre. One minute, he’s telling you about the cool features of the latest smartphone, and the next he is walking you through a tragic scene from World War II, each executed with effortless grace. Mike is your guy when your project calls for both class and authenticity.

RENA LOVEMAN voices.com/people/Rena_Loveman

Rena’s vocal quality is one of the most unique and marketable I have heard in many years. At her core, she exudes a smoky ferocity that adds intensity and authority to narration pieces, while creating a captivating commercial sensuality. Highly adaptable to content, Rena can also shift comfortably into a more relatable style that allows her to connect closely with the listener. With a natural ear for delivering a script and incredible self-direction abilities, Rena is a formidable talent worthy of consideration for any booking.

ROBERT FLEMING http://teatimevo.com

Robert’s voice is extremely current, with an 18-35-year-old sound that makes younger audiences pay attention. While he naturally moves through conversational scripts with casual precision, he also has a formality that lends itself well to denser material. Robert has a particular talent for medical narration, able to deliver words with innumerable syllables with the expert confidence of a surgeon. Robert is an easy call for a young sound capable of playful banter and natural authority alike.

What Can the Voiceover Business Learn from Politics? More Than You Might Think!

by J. Michael Collins 1 Comment

There is a lot of money in political campaigns. At the national level, this can amount to hundreds of millions of dollars for a single candidate. Some is well spent, while much is wasted in pursuit of vainglorious ambitions that exceed public buy-in. The question is, can the voiceover business learn from politics?

Embedded within the political process, however, are a low-profile group of individuals whose presence on a campaign can often make or break the candidate’s chance for success. These people often have vague titles like, “media adviser,” “consultant,” or, “strategist.” Ultimately, they are a highly-skilled group of fixers who can make the most mundane aspirant look electric, and the most scandal-ridden seem virtuous.

These operatives who add tremendous value to a political campaign have one thing in common: While they may draw a fixed salary over the length of the race, they make their real money based directly on the added value they provide, as measured by the media buy of the campaign. The better job they do, the more contributions a candidate receives, and the more money the campaign has to spend on advertising…….a small but significant percentage of which goes into their pocket.

There have been fiery debates recently about broadcast and new media rate structures in the voiceover business. A perception exists that rates are being pushed lower by talent influx and changing technology. Discussions both civil and acrimonious have generally boiled down to a broad consensus that buyouts are bad, and residual pricing based on usage is good.

Is it possible, however, that we may be missing the point altogether? Is there a fairer and more accurate means of determining appropriate broadcast and new media rate structures that account precisely for the value our services have added to a project? Can a $150 TV buyout on an online casting site actually be fairer than a national spot at double union scale with residuals?

This author believes the answer is yes to all three questions.

Consider this: The cost of a 13 week national broadcast run for a major brand commercial can run into the millions of dollars. With TV, maybe some cut downs for radio, and Internet pre-roll/social media ads, let’s say a major McBurger joint might spend $2M on the ad buy alone.

Union scale for such an ad might amount to around $4K for the various media for a single cycle. This represents one fifth of one percent of the total ad buy into the pocket of the single individual chosen by the company to give voice to their message.

Does that seem fair?

During a recent coaching session with a talent I am mentoring on the voiceover business, we browsed through job postings on a particular online casting platform. We encountered a TV ad for a nursing organization to run for one month in a single market of maybe 50,000 people in upstate New York. Pay? $150. Now, both of us initially reacted the same way: $150 for TV? That’s laughable!

Then a little light bulb went on.

What might this particular group be spending to air this project? Maybe…..maybe…..$2500? That might be a high estimate considering the market, but let’s go with it. TV only, 4-week buy, small local market, $2500. So, at $150 all-in, the talent receives fully six percent of the media buy.

If the talent working for the McBurger company were to receive the same, their pay for the gig would be $120,000 for a single cycle.

Which one seems more fair now?

It is entirely possible that the debate over rates, online casting, union versus non-union, etc… has completely missed the point. While blanket buyouts are clearly exploitative, especially for large brands, the cycle and usage structures the industry has long relied upon is only a degree less abusive. We are still signing away tremendous added value for a pittance of what we actually contribute to the campaign’s success. Perhaps there is a third way.

Broadcast and new media jobs should be considered in context, not based on holy-writ numbers negotiated in back rooms or dreamed up by entrepreneurs, the majority of which tend to be exceedingly favorable to the buyer.

This third way paradigm applies particularly well to new media like internet pre-roll, YouTube ads, and social media advertising. Tracking usage and impressions is cumbersome if it is possible at all. Tracking the media buy is much more accessible, and a far better barometer of the value we are adding. A medium to large social media ad campaign might cost $50,000, for instance. While the six percent figure presented in the small market spot example is probably a bit ambitious, one could argue that a minimum session fee plus three percent of the total ad buy would be a fair rate for any broadcast or new media run.

For our social media campaign, that might mean $250+$1,500 for usage. For McBurger, a flat $60,000….and for our nurses in Utica? That $150 suddenly looks a bit more reasonable.

These days, it’s not often that we look to politics for good ideas on our voiceover business. The great rate debate will not abate any more than poor alliteration. Nevertheless, perhaps this third way offers promise to bring order to the chaos.

Imagine No Commercials……It’s Easy if You Try

by J. Michael Collins Leave a Comment

When was the last time you intentionally watched a commercial while viewing a television program? If you are like most people, you were watching that program on a DVR, where you can fast forward for no commercials, or on a streaming service like Netflix where no commercials exist in the first place. Voice talent may purposefully watch commercials as a market research function, but we are distinctly unique in this pursuit. For the majority of content users, advertising is an unwelcome intrusion, avoided at almost any cost.

This is particularly true of the millennial generation, which has consistently rejected all forms of traditional advertising. Most 18-30 year olds have little affinity for traditional television, preferring to steam most of their content. Services that have little or no commercial presence are particularly popular. Watching the boob tube has become a function of disappearing demographic segments that no longer drive commerce.

A recent Washington Post article (see link below) cited alarming decline rates in traditional TV viewership. Similarly, there continues to be a shift away from terrestrial radio to the far less commercial-saturated satellite format. Moreover, statistics have shown that even internet pre-roll advertising on sites like YouTube is impacted by shifting expectations among target demographics. “Skip this ad” options are selected as soon as they are available, and many people abandon the selected content if they are forced to watch a commercial against their will. Furthermore, even if they do stick around, the advertiser runs the risk of having created a negative association instead of a positive one, and poisoning the very customer they intended to capture.

Remember, younger generations won’t be young forever. In ten years, some millennials will be entering their forties, and their children’s attitudes will be shaped by their own.

What does this mean for the voiceover industry?

Let’s envision the no commercial VO marketplace in 2025. Media will be more interactive, with 3D and its successors becoming more prominent. Content marketing will evolve to capture not just the attention but the engagement of a generation unwilling to experience passive advertising. Movie trailers will no longer use voice, instead becoming immersive experiences with the audience selecting content via instant feedback inputs. Broadcast television will have evolved into an almost entirely streaming medium, where advertisers will learn to hawk their wares in more subtle and interactive ways. Vignettes with stars and episodic content will have replaced the classic commercial spot, and any VO present in the content will be narrative and storytelling in nature.

Radio will only be a few steps behind, with cars embedding satellite radio and its offspring almost universally as costs decline. With the vehicle market shifting towards driverless cars in the next 10-20 years, radio itself may begin to see the end of its usefulness, as passengers can engage in video and communications content during their trip without endangering their safety.

Thus, as the voicoever industry remains transfixed today by the holy grail of national campaigns with heavy residuals, we may be entering into a period of rapid transition to a VO world where commercial work essentially no longer exists.

Terrifying yes, but it doesn’t mean the end for us.

As commercial VO begins its inevitable decline, we can take solace in the sectors of our industry that are growing rapidly; E-Learning, internal corporate narration, internet video narration and explainers, animation, video games, and audiobooks.

These segments have seen exponential growth in the past few years, and the evolution of media suggests that the growth will continue unabated for the foreseeable future. As impressions and consumer buy-in to these segments grow, we have the opportunity to begin reimagining rate structures for new media that will allow the transition away from commercial work to be less intimidating.

This should be a particular point of emphasis in video games and internet spaces, as these areas are already overtaking broadcast commercials in terms of audience. As this new media rises, talent, and those who represent us both among agencies, unions, and guilds like World Voices should begin insisting that pay climbs in a manner commensurate with viewership, as the added value of the VO in these media achieves the same critical mass as it currently has in broadcast work.

The industry is changing, as it always has. As talent, we must prepare for what is next, lest we find ourselves overtaken by it.

Are you ready?

*http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/03/11/americans-are-moving-faster-than-ever-away-from-traditional-tv/

Why Online Casting Sites Are The Future of Voiceover, But Low Rates Don’t Have To Be

by J. Michael Collins 7 Comments

The online casting marketplaces for voice talent have exploded in the past ten years. Between Voices.com, Voice123.com, bodalgo.com, and others, 300-500 jobs are being cast daily through online sites via public and private channels. This number easily equals (and probably exceeds) all agency jobs being cast through more traditional means on a given day. As we look to the future of voiceover, the fear of change has been, and remains, quite palpable. But, wait.

With this exponential growth come the teething pains accompanying any game-changing paradigm shift within an industry. Hyperbole is mixed with legitimate concerns about the business model, including rates, competition, ethics, and the direction in which the people behind the online casting sites wish to see the industry go.

Naturally, this uncertainty leads to personal divisions among talent and occasional sniping. Many of the loudest voices of antagonism can be found with surprising ease on the front pages of sites trumpeting cheap voice talent and with hundred-dollar-a-holler rate cards hiding in plain sight. None of us are saints in this regard, however, it is quite clear that wherever there is vitriol, hypocrisy will not be far behind.

Alas, I stand guilty. Infrequently, but too often, I have found myself tempted by the easy money of a low-budget job that will only take a few minutes of my time. I offer no defense; It is sheer greed. Typically, once the job is completed and I have been paid, I find myself feeling a lot like I feel after eating fast food; Guilty and a little sick to my stomach.

Every time I accept substandard pay…..every time ANYONE accepts substandard pay….it harms all of us, and it sends the message to the online casting sites and clients at large that if they press hard enough, we will buckle.

The allure of quick and easy money is not only damaging to our industry, it is also entirely unnecessary. We have been led, falsely, to believe that the business is inundated with talent, and that if we don’t take whatever is offered, someone else equally qualified will.

Maybe someone else will accept the bargain basement rate, but I suspect they won’t be as qualified as you think.

It is a pernicious myth that the supply side of the voiceover business is saturated. Tens of thousands of people nationally and globally are indeed positioning themselves as voice talent. It is equally true, however, that the number of these people who are truly talented, well-trained, technically savvy, and possessed of business intelligence is very marginal. I will be shocked if more than five thousand people in the USA are earning a full-time living as voice talent. Even that number may be high. A quick listen to the auditions on an average online job will show around 80% of submissions to be non-viable for technical or ability-based reasons. Even the vast majority of talent with agency representation does not make a living in voiceover.

This means that we, my fellow talent, are in control of the future of voiceover. We just don’t know it.

I have said many times and will say many times again, that there is far more work out there than there is quality talent to do it. In other words, we have pricing power, and it is up to us to exercise it. The time to do so is now.

Here are two thoughts on the future of voiceover that will terrify a lot of people.

1.) The online casting sites aren’t going away. They will only continue to grow and become more profitable, wielding proportionally more influence in our industry and over how we do business.

2.) The online casting model, which means the concept of an easy-to-use portal for those who need voices to find voices, is the future of this business. That doesn’t mean that it necessarily has to follow the same structure as it does today or that it will even be the same companies at the forefront (though it may well be,) but it means that the idea of aggregating jobs through clearinghouse sites is the way this and every other freelance business is going. We had better get used to it.

That means it is incumbent upon us, those who hold the trump card of supply, to shape the future of how we are presented to those with demand. It is also our responsibility to watch our own backs because no one else is going to do it for us. The people in charge of the online casting sites are not bad. I know many of them personally, and I can tell you that they are good-hearted, genuine people who love their families and kids just like we do. Nevertheless, they are business owners and would be remiss in their duty to their employees and investors if they did not maximize profits to the best of their ability. If you expect companies to place anything above profit, I invite you now to return from the 1950s and rejoin us in the real world.

This means we must shape the system’s future from within, not by assailing it from the sidelines. Far better to be the man (or woman) in the arena. It means that we must make clear to the powers that the brightest future, from which they can generate maximum profit, is not a high volume/low-cost model that degrades quality and leads to burnout but a world with fair rates and motivated talent.

How do we do this? First and foremost, we draw a line in the sand on pricing. We collectively and publicly agree to never charge a per-project price below a certain level. I have my number in mind, and we should begin a conversation on a figure representing the minimum value of our talent and skill.

I believe that only through collective refusal to work for less will we be able to effectively establish a permanent fair pricing model. If clients have no choice, they will pay. Let there be no doubt that any business with the budget to secure airtime or produce an internet video or casual app game is fully capable of compensating the talent who will add final value to the product in a manner that reflects the profit they will derive. Companies pleading poverty are pleading falsely.

Whatever has happened in the past, let us declare a new day in our industry and refuse to work for anything less than a minimum number that reflects our training, investment, and work quality. I believe we can achieve a consensus on a figure, and I will be the first to publicly pledge to abide by it. I encourage and challenge my fellow talent to do the same.

In addition to the professional minimum, we should work with organizations like WorldVoices to develop standard non-union minimums for different types of work. We should educate our peers when they are not adhered to. The message of talent pricing power should be shouted from every rooftop.

We should also utilize online casting sites thoughtfully and be aware that there are ways to maximize our profitability through them and protect the value of our work. Many myths are propagated about the terms and policies of online sites and future of voiceover. Allow me to address some of the more harmful ones.

Rights and Usage:

There is a common belief that it is the policy of the major sites that every project must be surrendered in perpetuity in all media to the client. This is not necessarily true.

Voice123 states clearly that you are agreeing to a final price for the work based on the terms posted by the client. This means that if they list that the project is for national TV broadcast, you surrender lifetime rights in that medium. However, the language is clear in that you only surrender the work for the indicated usage. If it were optioned for radio, internet, or another usage, you would be well within your rights to bill for additional compensation. Obviously, it is up to you to monitor this, which is tricky, but the language is not as broad as people think. Furthermore, you are perfectly able to add clauses in your proposal limiting rights and can add language indicating that accepting your proposal binds the client to those terms.

This last point is even more relevant to Voices.com and the future of voiceover. The sixth point in their terms of service states that all projects are full buyouts unless otherwise agreed in writing. I recently had a student encounter an issue with a client who used those terms to hold him to a very low fee for national broadcast rights. I contacted Voices.com about the matter, and they agreed that while the boilerplate TOS language is the default rights agreement, we are welcome to add language in our proposals that supersedes the standard terms.

Therefore, despite common belief, we retain ultimate control of our product on both major sites. Along with the future of voiceover.

There also exists the often-repeated canard that Voices.com does not allow you to contact the client directly and that SurePay is an evil mechanism to keep you from ever getting at the golden goose of repeat direct business. This is wrong in two ways.

First, while Voices.com does not allow you to include your contact information in your proposal, based on talent feedback to that policy they explicitly agreed to allow us to post our contact information on our profile pages. I have been hired directly from my page outside of the system hundreds of times, as have many other leading talents on the site.

Furthermore, once you book a job on Voices.com, you are given the client’s contact information under the “Payments” tab, and they are given yours. I have been personally told by people at the highest level of the company that their policy is strictly that any job posted to Voices.com should be completed through SurePay, but that we are more than welcome to contact the client directly after the job has been booked and work with them outside the site on other projects. Contrast this with the policy of some secondary and freelance sites, which looks downright benevolent. Heck, even agents don’t let you take full fare from your client after giving them ten percent of the first job.

So long as this policy doesn’t change, Voices.com is showing a very balanced approach to preserving their financial interest (which is their job) and being reasonable with those who generate their profits. Moreover, Voices.com has taken the lead in at least setting some sort of minimum, with no work running through the site for under $100 gross. While we need to move this number upwards for the sake of our collective prosperity and the future of voiceover, Voices should be credited for at least holding this line.

Let me be clear; The online casting sites are not on your side. They are not against you either. They are not good or evil, wrong or right. They are simply marketplaces where we trade our wares, and like any vendor at any marketplace, we pay the rent so that we can make a profit.

In this industry, there will always be hands in our pockets.

Our duty is to make sure our hands are deeper in theirs.

What Would You Do?

by J. Michael Collins Leave a Comment

Check out my new article on what happened when a client overpaid me by more than $20,000.

http://www.voiceovertimes.com/2014/12/10/what-would-you-do/

A Bird in the Hand……..

by J. Michael Collins Leave a Comment

Our regular clients are the lifeblood of our business. Chasing new jobs is exciting, but the relationships we build over the years are sustaining. There’s unlikely a single full-time pro out there hasn’t had a slow week saved by a big order from a return customer. Without repeat business, we would be voicing in between slurps of lukewarm Ramen.

Repeat business, however, is never a certainty. Clients can be loyal as a faithful hound…..right up until their boss decides it is time for a younger, hipper, older, other-gendered, foreign, convernouncery sound! So, is there any way to protect the revenue from the established relationships you have nurtured so diligently?

The answer is yes. Retainers!

A great business strategy to preserve income in the coming year is to evaluate the clients who keep coming back on a weekly or monthly basis as prospects for prepaid retainers. With few exceptions (Work as the signature voice of a television show or a particular animated character come to mind,) most of your clients carry some risk of moving in a different direction in the next twelve months for any variety of reasons.

Why risk it?

Every November, I choose a handful of my most regular clients and offer them retainer packages with incremental discounts depending on volume ordered. Discounts can be as high as 25% for a large volume of prepaid work. While I don’t usually consider discounts a good strategy for a VO career, in the case of prepaid volume retainers, it makes sense. Think of it like buying insurance from the house at the blackjack table. You are sacrificing a relatively small portion of likely, (But not guaranteed) gains in exchange for the certainty of a positive result. The reward is a year’s worth of work paid up front and the strong possibility that the retainer will be renewed once exhausted. Moreover, in some cases, clients will fail to use all of the work under retainer in the allotted time (Mine are generally 12-18 months.) This allows for additional revenue opportunities as well.

Having lots of birds in the bushes gives a feeling of security that can sometimes be false. Much better to have them in the pot.

J. Michael Collins

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