Category Archives: Voice Talent

Advertising Agencies Still Growing

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Thankfully, 2009 and 2010 are long past and we in the ad biz have seen some positive turnarounds. In the voiceover production and voice talent agent business we’ve experienced double digit growth within SunSpots Productions Studios in North Carolina and Florida. Many of the agencies with whom we collaborate are pushing along well too. Profits are down, but we’re all keeping busy. This story from Sageworks written by Mary Ellen Biery explains the details…

Ad, PR agencies grow despite slowing U.S. ad spending growth
Mary Ellen Biery, Contributor

U.S. ad spending growth might be looking tepid this year and next, but private companies in the advertising services business are experiencing their second year of double-digit sales growth, according to an analysis of financial statements by Sageworks Inc.

Ad agencies, public relations agencies, media buyers and other businesses that work in that space between advertisers and media owners have seen an average sales increase of more than 11 percent in the last 12 months , Sageworks’ data shows. It’s the second year of a recovery for the industry after an average drop in sales of nearly 7 percent in 2009 as advertisers clamped down on spending during the recession.

Indeed, advertising and other service-sector industries were among the top sales performers when Sageworks recently looked at the state of all privately held companies for the last 12 months.

Strategic consulting firm Kantar Media has reported that ad spending in the first half of 2011 was up 3.2 percent, driven by Internet media and cable television ad expenditures. But the biggest advertisers’ spending stalled in the second quarter, putting ad markets more dependent on mid-sized advertisers, Kantar said. And fresh concerns about the economy have prompted some forecasters to cut estimates for 2012 ad spending despite expected boosts from political ads and the Summer Olympics in London.

Media services firm MagnaGlobal, a division of advertising and marketing giant Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG), recently lowered its 2012 forecast for total ad spending growth to 2.9 percent from 4.8 percent, pointing to a slowdown in manufacturing, consumer spending and ongoing problems in the labor and housing markets. The firm maintained its forecast for 1.6 percent growth this year. Online advertising and digital direct media are expected to outperform local media, according to the firm.

Some smaller, independent firms, however, are planning for another solid year in 2012 despite the outlook for lackluster ad spending overall.

“We’re bullish, in particular with our clients and the opportunity for new clients,” said Steve Luquire, founder and CEO of Charlotte, North Carolina-based advertising, marketing, and PR firm Luquire George Andrews. (Just a couple hours away from SunSpots Productions studios near Asheville.)

He expects the roughly 50-person firm’s sales could be up about 10 percent this year, and he’s added seven new hires since July in anticipation that business will remain good.

By the way, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas on Wednesday said job cuts across all industries in the U.S. have already topped cuts in 2010, with one month left. But layoffs announced by advertising services companies have tapered off in recent months.

You can read the entire article at Forbes/Sageworks.

SunSpots Productions

SunSpots Productions provides professional voice talent and creative audio production to agencies, web designers, networks, theme parks, radio, tv, film and wherever quality audio production is needed. If it makes a sound or needs a voiceover SunSpots makes it happen. Plus we offer our ISDN sound booths to voice talent who are visiting the Orlando or Asheville areas.

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It's hot out! We need Fans!

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Ok, maybe that’s the wrong kind of fan. How about simply being our Facebook fan? For every new fan we get during August we’ll donate an equal amount to Give Kids The World, an organization that brings smiles to children with illnesses and their families. We’ll choose a different organization every month so we can give to those in need of hope, a smile or more. Are you a SunSpots client or voiceover talent? Click below, become a fan and help us help a good cause.

Thanks!

Bambi visits SunSpots near Asheville

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The wildlife hits just keep on coming. Looks like it’s lunchtime in the animal world too. Around noon today a large deer visited SunSpots NC recording studios property near Asheville. We’ve got a heavy producing apple tree that the deer are beginning to visit every other day. Here’s our latest visitor:

Have any wildlife where you work? (Other than that creepy guy with the weird hair at the water cooler.)

And as always if you’re searching for professional voice talent, fully produced, supervised and directed recording sessions and creative audio production in most languages please visit SunSpots Productions.

What wild beast will show up next?!

Voice Talent John Oliver Fights Behind The Mic

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SunSpots voiceover talent John Oliver puts on the gloves and fights hard behind the mic in this video produced by our friends at Williamson/Evans studios.

You can hear more of John at SunSpots Productions site. Here’s John Oliver’s voice talent demo.

Choose SunSpots when you’re looking for pro voice talent like John and creative audio production. Contact SunSpots Productions with studios near Asheville, NC and Orlando, FL at 800-355-SPOTS.

Union or Non-Union, is that the voiceover question?

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Earlier this week I received an email from an active Non-Union voice talent. Let’s call this voiceover person, Terry, to cover all the gender bases. Terry felt that since they’ve been Non-Union, (not a member of SAG/AFTRA) that they could make more money by being a Union member exclusively. In Terry’s mind movie trailers, National Retailer TV and Radio accounts, the biggest of the big voiceover jobs are just sitting there ripe for the picking. Terry’s very experienced with 15 years of full-time freelance voiceovers behind the microphone. Like dreams of those dancing sugarplums Terry’s thinking that the bump “up” to Union status is the way to go to advance Terry’s career.

But is it true? Would Terry make more as a Union voiceover talent?

My opinion…it depends. Timing, meaning right place and right time are important, Terry’s vocal skill set, Terry’s physical location may also make a difference.

What about Financial Core? Doesn’t Fi-Core allow you to do BOTH Union and Non-Union work? Sometimes being Fi-Core can be a great benefit if you’re in the right location, conversely you can become a vo pariah if you live somewhere else.

These are questions I’d love to have discussed by those of you in the know about such things. I’m Fi-Core myself. I lost my agent in NYC because I was Fi-Core, yet for years outside of NYC, I was the voice of Circuit City (RIP), Nissan and Lenscrafters. Those gigs provided enough income to…well…to be life changing.

My bread and butter, the day in day out gigs are always non-union. Sometimes they pay very well, even above Union voice rates, most of the time not. I’ve always looked at this as a volume game and with volume one can become very financially successful.

What are your thoughts? Are you an experienced talent who has done both as Financial Core or previously one now the other? Are you a full-time Union voiceover talent? With the internet the tables have more than turned, they’ve been flipped over and it’s anyone’s game anymore.

We’d love to hear what you have to say on the issue.

Also, if you’re searching for professional union and non-union voiceover talent please visit us at SunSpots. Search here for voice talent.

Thanks in advance for your input.
Tom


Recording equipment category at GuitarCenter.com

Voiceover Talent Marv Henry passed away

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Voice Talent Bob Jump informs us that one of the pioneers in our voiceover world, Marv Henry, has passed away. Marv Henry was one of our friends at Studiocenter’s original founding voice talents. Our condolences and best wishes to his family and friends.

Every time we lose someone it’s another reminder to tell our friends and family how much we love them.

Thanks Bob, for letting us know.
Peace-
Tom

UPDATE: A more detailed story was posted last night by Jim Washington from the Virginian-Pilot:

By Jim Washington
The Virginian-Pilot
© February 16, 2009
Marv Henry, a well-known voice on local radio for decades, died Monday.

According to friends, Henry’s work appeared in movies, television and radio over the years. He worked for several local stations, including WAVY, WFOG and WTKR, and did voiceover work for the company Studio Center Worldwide in Norfolk.

Henry was one of the company’s founding talents back in the 1960s, according to owner William Prettyman.

“He was one of the all-time best voices at the company,” Prettyman said. “He was a legend.”

Dave Davis is a producer at Studio Central and worked with Henry for almost 20 years.

“He was the most talented voice actor I’ve ever worked with,” Davis said. “He had a range that was second to none. He could draw poetry out of the words. He had an ability to make anything sound better than it was written.”

Henry was an office cut-up as well, Davis said. His co-workers often found themselves the subject of his doodles.

“He was always drawing cartoons of people at work,” Davis said. “He was like an uncle. A mischevious uncle.”

Star Wars Weekends Video

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I’m in a postin’ mood today. I found this video in the vaults that Zak Miller produced for Disney’s Star Wars Weekends. He did all the audio post at SunSpots FL studio. Tom Cassidy voices, but I think they chose James K. Flynn for the final mix. It’s a couple years old and ran on tv and I remember seeing one run at a theater at Downtown Disney one night. Just a side note on Downtown Disney; if you love movies and great audio go the AMC theaters there. Enormous, digital screens and amazing audio. Only downside is the pricing.

It takes a moment to load. Crank up your audio for this video. As always, Zak gave the audio a creative smackdown and it sounds great!

Hey Zak, do you remember what effects you used for the mouse ears opening on the tower? Sounds like some old chains being pulled or something.

Tom

Happy Anniversary Google!

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Google, no longer just “search engine” Google, is celebrating their 10th anniversary this week. Can you believe it’s been 10 years? Can you believe what it was like BEFORE Google hit the web? Can you believe so many of us passed up buying Google stock at $80 a share? lol I did on that one. Thought they wouldn’t be around long. OUCH!

What a massive player and global powerhouse they’ve become. They stuck with their dreams, focused on excellence and became much more than just successful. Their name even became a verb!

I wonder how so many of us would never be found without Google being on the web. A few years ago, after a technically savvy employee left us, we were absolutely lost in Google’s results. We were ranking in the 800′s or worse.

Through three years of effort we (SunSpots Productions) now show up at least in the Top 20 results in Google’s search engine or mostly on their front page. For example search for “voice talent agent“, “spanish voice talent“, “creative audio production“, “voice talent“, “audio production“, “asheville voice talent“, “orlando voice talent” and there we are on the front page or number one out of millions of pages. It was all done while wearing a white hat too! (SEO peeps know what I mean.)

So thank you and congratulations Google! You’ve inspired and changed our world. I hope the next 10 are full of positive innovations and useful products for us all.

Exciting, New "Welcome to the Blog" Welcome Message.

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Happy New Year!

So it’s time for SunSpots to join the world of bloggers. Sure wish there was a different word for it. Blogging sounds like a Scottish mud fight.

Our plan for this blog is to keep you informed about our heroic, multi-talented SunSpots staff, our recording sessions, helpful tips for voice over talent and ad agency news and of course rants and raves.

If you have any suggestions as to what heaping piles of wisdom we should insert here please let me know at: Tom[at symbol]MySunSpots.com

If you’ve not been the main page of our web site please visit this link: http://www.SunSpotsProductions.com . You can listen to demos, book talent online and request our voice talent and audio production demo cd too.

I’ll be placing some info for new voice talent on soon. Seems to be a very popular subject. Every day we get requests from people wanting to be voice over talent and asking for advice on creating a voice demo, how to market themselves and especially how to create an affordable home studio or voice booth. We’ll have our resident ISDN expert and SunSpots Producer/Engineer Zak advise on that issue.

We’ll also be creating podcasts of our voice talent instruction with interviews and advice in the coming weeks. My belief in advising talent is, as the late James Brown said, “Just keep it real baby”. So I’ll be talking about staying away from topics that seem to mostly apply to those voicing in New York and LA. Let’s talk about what it’s like to work every day around the country doing good ole medical, narrations/industrials and such. It’s a small crowd that voices national animation, national SAG and AFTRA gigs and movie trailers. What I want to discuss is the business of voice work. The day to day business of voice work, not something that may occur rarely. Let’s talk about being voice artists and running your voiceover career as a business at the same time.

Nice to meet you.

We’ll talk again soon.

Tom