Don’t phone it in.

I’m going to talk about voice overs first. Then I’m going to talk about student portfolios. Walk with me.

I just listened to about 190 voice over auditions. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s not the most glamorous part of being a creative. But it is necessary.

Here’s the thing: voice over auditions have grown much sloppier over the years. Here are some major glitches I heard in this last round of 190:

• Echo in the room.
• Talent flubs a line and doesn’t bother to re-record.
• I can tell the talent has a cheap mic.
• I can tell the talent is recording with their iPhone.
• Volume is mixed way too low.
• Volume is mixed way too high.
• Talent didn’t read the casting specs I wrote (e.g., an energetic 20-year-old guy auditioning for the role of a laid-back 50-year-old.) 
• I hear the mic stand wiggling in the background.
• Sounds like talent was on a plane. Maybe it was just someone vacuuming in the background.

There’s one reason why voice over auditions have grown sloppier: technology. Mics are less expensive. Garageband. Apps. It’s easier to set up a home studio. It used to be VO talent would go into a professional studio and record their takes where nothing was left to chance. I’m all for home studios and convenience. But not when it allows you to be lazy.

If the talent’s voice is exceptional, I can overlook poor quality. It’s just an audition, after all. But if there’s even a question (and with 190 voices to choose from, there always is), I go with quality. Because quality shows me that the talent cares. They care about their career, this particular opportunity, their craft, and my script.

Now, here’s how this applies to student portfolios: technology can make you lazy, too.

Art directors can search Getty Images and plug in cheap stock. Copywriters can use a Microsoft Word thesaurus. Creative teams can use nicely designed printouts and Keynote presentations to sell an okay idea without really pushing it as far as it can go conceptually.

Whether you’re a student trying to get your portfolio on a creative director’s desk or a creative director trying to win a pitch, quality and craft can be the difference between a win and a loss. As Sally Hogshead says, “The difference between an A- book and an A+ book is all the difference in the world.”

This is your career we’re talking about. Don’t phone it in.

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Words from Sally Hogshead

I came across a post today with lots of great advice from Sally Hogshead. The list originally appeared in Nancy Vonk’s and Janet Kestin’s Pick Me, but I’ll link to the blog I found it on.

Advice from Sally:

1. There are no right answers, including these.
2. The hipster creative with tattoos and piercings rarely does the coolest ads.
3. Dominos delivers to Starbucks.
4. Smart beats clever.
5. You’ll create a better book by breaking the rules than by following them.
6. Spend more time thinking, less time executing.
7…read more

Seven Reasons We Forget The Work Is All That Matters

1. Client Fear. We think we know the client so well, we kill our own ideas (or allow them to be killed) based on what we imagine they will and won’t like.
2. Organization Fetish. We become more concerned with the presentation of the work than the work itself.
3. Bullet Points. We come up with a list of reasons to explain why the idea works instead of just letting it work or die on its own merit. 
4. Production Lust. The client greenlights an idea, and we get so excited about getting something produced that we stop working on it.
5. Politics. We think it’s either our right or our turn to get something produced. Either we’re so senior we just expect the work to happen. Or we’re junior enough to believe that we deserve to get thrown a bone.
6. The Internal Editor Goes to Lunch. We’re trained early on to produce tons and tons and tons of ideas. And that’s very good training (at least according to Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours rule). But sometimes we think that since we came up with lots of ideas, at most of them deserve to be loved.
7. Technique Love. We confuse a cool technique with a good idea.

Sally Hogshead says brilliant ideas are fragile. Any wonder why so many good ones are extinguished, pulverized, or simply passed over?