I always say to would be advertisers who ask for advice, to keep the message simple & I make no apologies for that. Why? Simply because it’s in your interest to communicate clearly & consistantly. Remember once you keep your worded message simple, you can then add all the sound & visual Fx ( the bells & whistles ) you damn well want to enhance that further..So in short, I recommend to, Keep it Simple!..Because in my experience this has time & again proven to be the most effective way.

Til next time!..Gerry W.

“The man who stops advertising to save money

is like the man who stops the clock to save time”

Henry Ford the 1930s Great Depression

Sure..it can be, But like anything if you know what you’re doing & you work at delivering a script, a character, or a tone, setting the appropriate scene & portraying it with certainty clarity & timing, you can make it appear effortless. When you do it correctly & to the best of your ability, you gain respect & appreciation for your skillset or craft from those who understand just how well you communicate & sell on their behalf, & the result of doing that great job is, you are simply called back again & again & again.

I cannot & don’t want to do the job of a great surgeon, a brilliant architect or a great golfer, but I do know & appreciate the years of hard work dedication & study it takes to become a so called overnight success in any sector..I’m a true believer in leaving the best do their finest…you don’t even have to like them but you do have to respect & appreciate their strengths & abilities. Be pragmatic, do what you do best & call the appropriate people for the job in our industry, & see the result of just how well our professional approach built over many years can now work for you…Until next time!

P.S Congratulations to the very likeable & indeed affable Mr Ryan Tubridy on the Late Late & if I remember rightly I first saw Ryan around the corridors of RTE back in 1995.. that’s just how long overnight success takes!!!

The Question I’m asked is: How do I get into Voiceover work ?

Answer ? www.piehole.ie & www.piehole.co.uk will now give discount when you type in Voucher code “Ger” ..it’s for V/Os / broadcasters & actors who want to promote themselves & gain access to the Irish UK & Canadian Voiceover markets & for those who want to enter the european english speaking market..it’s run by Ad Agency folk…as direct as it gets! But do have a good Demo Guys!…V/O’s Great night at Equity HQ Liberty hall earlier this month & continued success to all who attended the event, as piehole.ie & .co.uk presented “The Voice Over state of the Nation Address” a fun night with more importantly a practical approach & guide to the current market place & how to further promote your skillset. This is a brief & practical answer but if you need any further help or advice just send me an email & I’ll see if I can’t help.

News: I’ve recently completed a series of films for international conservation giants the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers including their flagship 50th anniversary celebration film, to be screened at Buckingham Palace in May to an audience including HRH the Duke of Edinburgh and featuring renowned naturalists David Bellamy and Sir David Attenborough.

Til next time..Laters!

This might seem so so obvious but before spending heavily on purchasing advertising airtime it’s essential to target your market clearly. First get the station/s right…second get the message right !
Examples of how to do it badly are everywhere & having Ads chucked together free of charge or for half nothing across a selection of stations with different voices different music & different interpretations on different packages is just plain wasteful. Having advertised before, many find their new message now sounds different from the last one..again!…It can work but why play russian roulette with your hard earned money when for a few quid more, which is usually a fraction of the actual airtime cost, you can create a message that’s consistent & synonymous with your business, given important keywords, constructed & developed to be outstanding above all others within an Ad break bolstering brand respect & recognition.

Remember it’s better to pull back marginally on airtime leaving something in the budget for your message..yes the Ad!  Take the opportunity to fill that expensive airspace with a worthwhile message that will take maximum advantage of your time because good or bad Ad..you’ve just payed to play it..repeatedly!

Irish Voiceovers: On a subject more directly related to my work, surveys on the most attractive accents emerge every few years & I see yet again the Irish accent is a winner! The lilt of scottish and Southern Irish voices are much more attractive than the Queen’s finest English. In a boost to the Scottish and Irish diaspora, new research to find out what accents people like and dislike most, has found that English spoken with Southern Irish, Scottish and New Zealand accents are the most popular. Top of a table of 34 accents compiled from research based on more than 5,000 people in the UK…So there’s a chance us V/Os can still earn a quid or two across the herring pond!

In the early years, before effective sound recording and mixing, announcements were produced “live” and at-once in a studio using just one Voice-over. In later years when recording, a corporate sponsor hired a producer, who hired writers and the voiceover would be called into a selected studio to voice a project for Radio TV Film or Documentary.

The industry expanded very rapidly with the advent of television in the 1950s when the age of highly produced serial radio shows or sponsored programmes ended. The ability to record high-quality sound on magnetic tape really created opportunities, as has the proliferation of computers today capable of recording using professional software to edit. Today technology makes it possible to have commercial recordings edited mixed & delivered by professionals to a Broadcasting organisation in a matter of minutes, emailing scripts & making the use of a remote professional recording or voiceover service is now simply a convenient everyday event!…Today if you want something voiced just email or call & anyone in our industry would be happy to help & usually deliver exactly what you’re looking for sameday!

Gerry Wilson Compilation Demo.mp3

It’s my first post here so hope you find it someway interesting amusing useful or helpful!

Well let me start with this…It’s a world of change out there for nearly every sector these days & I can’t help but notice for the voiceover artist it’s no different, a giant leap for V/Os..maybe!

As most know It has been relatively new to the industry (say 10 years or there abouts) to have a V/O deliver his or her completed voice over sent as an email attachment or FTP upload to anywhere under the sun with great success & quality retention..Yep thanks to Broadband it’s brilliant & it’s bloody quick! The Slam Dunk of change I refer to in the title here is in online audio advertising using voice talent…Yep guys & girls it’s in the Net!.. Yes how damn clever ..well if the Star Newspaper can have pun fun hell why can’t I ..hey!!!

For those who don’t get it..I’m talking about audio drop Advertising on websites, a new territory for the V/Os of the world to attempt to stick their flag-in & an enterprising thought fashioned by & for the advertising sector, & here’s how it works Eg: Say you visit a financial institution online, well as the page starts to download a short 5 second voice over says:…”Hey have you noticed our interest rate. it’s our lowest online.. apply now it takes just 5 mins”
…Advertising has largely been visual on websites up to now with some audio elements Eg: Movie trails or music videos incorporating audio usage anyway, but the interesting thing now is this form of drop-in audio advertising is happening at a low but steady pace for voiceover talent. Yep I suppose to some extent this isn’t new or news but the fact that the online advertising industry is actively doing something to introduce short audio pieces or advertisements on sites in this way is a sign of changing times for net advertising & the voiceover industry!…it just remains to be seen if the customer or site visitor just turns the audio down because they find it annoying, or maybe they’ll happily let it flow over them, accepting it as a progressive part of the commercial landscape that is the WWW?

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