By Rudy Gaskins, August 20, 2023
Your brand is the perception held in the mind of your audience. Therefore, creating and influencing that perception is what branding is all about. Effective branding is based on truthful feedback from your audience and good intel about who they are, how they think, what they want, where they work, etc. In learning to see the world from their point of view we are able to see how to best position and/or improve our product or service. Fortunately, one can take the time to plan and test before launching a brand activation publicly. On the other hand, most voice actors are in too much of a rush to get going, and therefore end up spending an inordinate amount of time trying to revise missteps. Getting a second or third chance to change your audience’s mind is far more difficult than launching your branding campaign on a solid footing with built-in margins for adapting to changing perceptions, and the things you didn’t know to think about.
It pays to spend money.
Anybody can come up with an idea for a logo or slogan, and many voice actors/entrepreneurs do just that. Remember that as a voice actor, you’re often marketing yourself to marketing experts at ad agencies. These people live and breathe branding. They have college degrees in branding. They work on multimillion dollar branding campaigns for a living. So, they know amateur marketing when they see it and they are not impressed. Your friends and family, and even your fellow voice actors may love your ideas, but they are not your audience. Buyers are your audience. Talent agents and casting directors are your audience. Other voices can be a useful sounding board, but not one that is determinative. Just as the voice actor’s skills are built on years of education, training, sacrifices, and tribulations, so is the case for branding experts. The smart branding expert hires a voice actor when they need a voice to express a particular brand. They don’t do it themselves because it saves money or seems like fun. The smart voice actor will follow the same reasoning and hire a banding expert when they want to build a brand. At the very least, this will likely get you off to a good start. Be the voiceover expert. Otherwise, don’t get upset when the buyer says, “No thanks, we can get someone for the office to do the voiceover.” If you don’t have the money, find a way to get the expert assistance. Don’t assume because you need to do branding, that you’re good at doing branding. Just because you need to market your service doesn’t mean it’s your forte. If you honor your craft, honor the craft of others. Good money is money spent on what you don’t know.
Get tactical.
When you’re not in the room, do you know how your audience describes you? Talented? Witty? Difficult? Charming? Egotistical? Relatable? Elitist? The best in the business? Mediocre? Highly professional? Pushy? Too talkative? Nervous? Disingenuous? Self-conscious? Chauvinistic? Racists? Woke? Minority?
There are two points to be made here: The first is that whether you like it or not, you already have a brand and a vast part of it is unknown to you. The second is that branding starts with knowing what you want your target audience to feel, think, and believe about your product and service.
The mission behind your brand will determine your strategy for creating a way to have it live in the minds of your target audience. Your brand’s home is not in your office or on your business card. Your brands home is the mid of your audience. Do they even know it exist? From your strategy will emerge specific tactics for your brand to move into its new home. Who is your audience? What do you have that they need? How do they like to be reached? When do they like to be reached? What differentiates your service from your competition? Savvy marketers will consider these questions and many others as they help you develop your brand.
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From the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences
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Know where you’re going.
One doesn’t just blindly take to the highway and hope they arrive at the right destination. You first look at a map to figure out which roads will get you there. Brand strategy is your map for getting to your destination. A professional marketer has traveled these roads before. They know where the potholes, dead ends are and what time the traffic comes to a crawl. On top of that, they bring an objective point of view to the table.
Having the objective point of view of a marketer will help you map out a clear path with definitive milestones and measurable results. Whether you’re new to voice acting, reinventing a stagnant career, or doing damage control, map out your course before you get on the road.
Leverage your points of difference.
What is unique about what you’re selling, that thing that will give people a reason to buy your service over others? Just saying you’re good, or even the gest is not enough. You have to find a way to show that you have exceptional talent. Showing is good branding.
There’s not much the actor can do about the essential nature of their voice. Continued training is a must and a plus, but that is for marginal improvements that add up over time. It’s not as if you’re going to go from a natural soprano to a baritone. So, booking jobs comes down to branding, auditions, demo reels, and facilitators like agents and casting directors. If you have a skill for multiple character voices, sound effects, singing, voice matching, etc., you can highlight these points of difference to set you apart.
And never forget professionalism, focus, and personal likability. People prefer to work with people they like, people who create a pleasant and efficient working process. The appeal of your marketing assets, website, postcards, business cards, email signature, etc. can help differentiate you, but one’s personality can wipe it all away. Fortunately, there are professionals for dealing with personality issues. You don’t have to feel less than, ashamed or deficient if you’re actively working on yourself.
Develop a narrative.
Over time, it can be very effective to inform your audience through your branding, about how you came to voiceover, and why it’s important to you. Voice acting is rarely a first career pursuit. Many people come to it after working in a related field like acting, radio, agenting, etc., but others come from completely unexpected careers. We work with medical doctors, lawyers fitness gurus, and on and on. Then, of course, there are successful voiceover actors seeking to expand into genres outside their primary line of work, i.e., transitioning from television commercials to audiobooks or video games.
It’s a smart, long-term strategy to diversify your skills, but remember that your audience doesn’t necessarily see how it all connects. In other words, you may be more interesting and memorable when your story is known. This is not the first thing on your branding to-do list. It’s something you want to keep tables on so that you can leverage a clear narrative that explains how your past defines the best part of your present.
Manage your brand.
Let’s assume that you’re constantly learning and growing as a voice actor. On the other hand, let’s assume that you’re becoming stale and set in your ways. Brand management is the ongoing process of exposing the added value that you bring to the table, and making adjustments where you may be falling short. You may do 9 things well, but people are wired to focus on the 10th thing you did poorly. This means adjusting your strategy and tactics as you see changes developing in your skills and in the marketplace. New technologies, advertising trends, a new agent, a job opportunity that’s outside your wheelhouse — all green lights for looking at possible branding enhancements.
This isn’t to say that you should disrupt the integrity of your brand with every new change in the marketplace. Conduct a thoughtful examination of potential opportunities and decide if they warrant a response.
Ultimately, branding is an ongoing living, breathing activity. It’s perpetual in the sense that it happens whether you take action or not. Whether you actively pursue the cultivation of your brand, people will develop an impression of you. What you do from there will determine your success.
Rudy Gaskins is the CEO and co-founder of the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences (SOVAS), a nonprofit organization in support of voice actors and the community of professionals that comprise the voice acting community. He is the co-creator of That’s Voiceover! Career Expo and the Voice Arts® Awards. Rudy is an Emmy Award-winning TV producer and branding expert, who has developed creative and branding expertise for global brand such as American Express, Lexus, NBC Sports, Delta Air Lines,Costco, Food Network, BET, and TV One. He has won dozens of marketing and creative awards across the media spectrum.
From the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences
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