Bienvenidos al podcast con Anne Ganguzza y Pilar Uribe! In this episode, your hosts cover how creating a great demo can get you booked without auditioning, the versatility of having multiple demos, and how being kind to everyone you meet is really the most underrated marketing technique…
Transcript
>> It’s time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry’s top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let’s welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.
Pilar: Hola, BOSS Voces. Bienvenidos al podcast con Anne Ganguzza y Pilar Uribe.
Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and I'm happy to welcome back with me as special guest cohost Pilar Uribe. Pilar, how are you today?
Pilar: I'm doing great, Anne. ¿Tú cómo estás?
Anne: I don't know. Sí.
Pilar. Just say bien, just say bien.
Anne: Bien, bien.
Pilar: Bien covers it all.
Anne: Everybody will follow my own journey as I learn Spanish. Thank you. And I learned to be as -- the best bilingual voice artist I can be, but let me talk about another language, another language of love which it comes from my VO studio kitty Sebrina today. I noticed, Pilar, you know how animals, they have that sense. When you're a cat lover and a cat lover walks into my home, my cats know it. And I have to tell you that my little Sebrina, who is the most sociable of the three VO studio cats that I have, she's usually the first one that will come down and greet people, if she feels that they are sufficient --
Pilar: Worthy.
Anne: -- cat lovers. Yes.
Pilar: If they're worthy of her attention.
Anne: So I have to tell you that the last two times we've been recording, she has been scratching at my studio door, and she just doesn't do that. And I know, I know that she hears you because I have inside and outside headphones. And so what I hear here in my headphones in the booth are also kind of projecting outside my booth through my headphones. So I know she hears you. There's no other reason to explain why she's scratching at the door.
Pilar: Oh, I love that.
Anne: Like she must hear your voice.
Pilar: That's so cute.
Anne: She must hear your voice. And she must know that there's yet another cat lover with me, and she's scratching to get into the studio.
Pilar: And she knows there's a possible suitor right outside.
Anne: That's right. Exactly.
Pilar: Paco. Oh yeah.
Anne: Paco. Yes, she probably feels it. I'm telling you.
Pilar: They know, they know these things. They know.
Anne: They do. They know everything. Wow.
Pilar: We're just their, their custodians. They're the ones who rule.
Anne: Exactly. So I had to tell you that story, you know, because we share, we share a love for studio cats, for sure.
Pilar: So I can say, I can give a little shout out. Hola Sebrina, ¿cómo estás?
Anne: Oo. She's going to hear the scratching soon. I'm telling you. So we had a great conversation on our last podcast about being a bilingual voice talent and what it takes to, I guess, be successful in the industry. And I want to continue that to go a little bit more in detail. So if there are beginners out there or people just entering into the industry that want to market themselves as a bilingual voice talent, what are the steps that it would take for them to do so successfully? First of all, I think you must have some sort of a demo, right, that showcases that you have this talent. What are your thoughts about a demo and how you can successfully market yourself as bilingual through your demo or not, or what works for you?
Pilar: Okay. So since I started out in the world of voiceover without any like really any information -- I mean in the world of dubbing, that's what I meant -- they knew I spoke English, they knew I spoke Spanish, so I could do both. And I just kind of jumped in. I did not have a voiceover agent until I got to Los Angeles. So I had to get my own work. And that meant a lot of knocking on doors, talking to other actors and saying, okay, where are you, where are you working? What studios are you working in? And there aren't that many in Miami.
Anne: And you're talking physical knock. I'm just going to clarify this --
Pilar: Oh yeah.
Anne: -- you mean like physically networking with other people, which today really translates into online, right? Maybe --
Pilar: Yes.
Anne: -- groups and online, online networking groups. But yeah, you had to physically become a good networker.
Pilar: Yes. Thank you for telling me that, because, because I don't even realize. I think it's interesting because you know, you get to a place -- you know, I'm talking to you here. I earned my living doing this and it's, it's really, when you go back, and I'm looking at my, my past, everyone thinks, oh, oh, she's doing this. She has it all. Oh, it's oh, it's like really easy. Look at her. And every single step that you make is, it's like, you're climbing up the mountain, and then you slide back down and then you climb up the mountain, and you slide back down a little bit.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: And it's a lot of walking --
Anne: You claw your way up the mountain.
Pilar: -- you, you literally crawl your way up the mountain. My, um, my ex mother-in-law, God bless her, told me one time when I was learning something many, many years ago, she said as much as you may learn and then fall back, and, and if you're, if it's another language or if it's a new profession, you're never going to be at the point where you don't know anything. Once you start learning, you can't say you don't know anything because you actually know something now about that subject. And I, that's just something that I've always taken with me.
Anne: Yeah, that's a cool perspective. Yup.
Pilar: Because the more I learn -- yeah, right? Because the more I learn, the more I realize, oh, okay. I don't know about so much more.
Anne: Exactly.
Pilar: But there's other stuff that I do know now. So I just, I kind of bring it all. You know, my, my little lump of knowledge gets bigger and bigger. And so when I first started dubbing, as I said in a couple, couple episodes before, I just, it was luck that I got the job, but it was because I had been auditioning so many times before for these different studios -- no, excuse me, for this one studio.
Anne: But was it really luck, Pilar? If I ask you to think that back, was it really luck? Because you had really been working, uh, networking with people and getting to know people, and I'll tell you, the first rule of marketing is people buy from people they know, like, and trust. And so I think you might've been establishing that relationship in working in those studios when they said, you know what? We need somebody to do this dubbing job. And boom, guess who's top of mind? There you are. Just a thought.
Pilar: Okay, for those VO voces, those BOSS Voces who are listening to Anne for the first time, you got to go take classes with this woman, because she's completely turning my story around. And I'm sitting there, like my brains are like going, whaat?
Anne: I love it. You're a marketer. It's so funny, the parallels, right?
Pilar: I don't even know how I did it, but you're basically showing me all this stuff that I did without me even realizing it. So thank you for that.
Anne: Well, it's cool because we, we get to work it backwards now because now --
Pilar: Yes.
Anne: -- people just entering in the business, are they networking online? How are they networking? And maybe they should consider all versions of networking because it all helps you, you know, to get where you need to go.
Pilar: We're doing it, we're doing reverse engineering.
Anne: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Pilar: So reverse engineering a lot of the times means, and again, I'm not saying I do this, but when I have an interaction with somebody, I always keep them in my mind, and I send them an email, and I let them know what I'm doing. Because a lot of the time -- it's, it's basically being and not stalking them and not being obnoxious about it, but so they know that you're around. You know, for so many months before I actually got my first dubbing gig, I didn't get any response. And the same thing happened when I, when, when I started working for NPR. I didn't hear anything for months and months and months. And what I realized is that marketing is always the long game.
Anne: Isn't it? Ugh, yes.
Pilar: It's, it's the long game --
Anne: That's it, we can go home now Pilar, because that was, that was the wisdom, that nugget of wisdom. It is, it's a long game. So many people want that instant result.
Pilar: Yeah, because we have, we're exposed to instant gratifications through our cell phones, through our laptops.
Anne: Yup.
Pilar: And what it is is that it's basically putting a tiny grain of sand into the atmosphere and letting it go there. It might come back. It might not, but every single time you do it, you're sending the energy out of, I'm a voiceover artist. I can do this for you.
Anne: Yeah, absolutely.
Pilar: And eventually that does come back.
Anne: Yes.
Pilar: So I get my first gig and then I'm thinking, okay, I want more. So then I start asking questions. I started asking my actor friends and like, oh, you're with this studio. How do you get into this studio? And it turns out that the person who recommended me to work in the first studio is also now working part-time in the second studio. So I call him up and I say, hey, you know, what's going on? And they're like, oh, okay, well, I don't really have anything for you now, but maybe. So I was like, okay, great. And then, boom. Maybe I make a call or maybe he calls me again. And then the chain starts happening. So that's really what it became.
So at one point I was working for four different studios and, you know, making these connections and then slowly but surely. So then you reach a point, right? I want more. So then I go into the audiobook world, and I start doing that. And then a big part of my, my voiceover journey was Fafcon because --
Anne: Yup.
Pilar: -- I went and that's --
Anne: Networking.
Pilar: -- when I experienced. Yeah. That's when I experienced, I was like, oh, these people actually make a living at it full-time, because I'm sitting here running around, you know, with four different studios.
Anne: Sure.
Pilar: And I'm sure trying to deal with the whole audiobook thing. And, and they're like, oh no, we have our clients. We have our IVR. We have our people who call us up every so often. And we, and I'm like, oh, that's a new concept. And I had no idea about this part of the business.
Anne: You were learning about now these are all different genres. You were just doing dubbing --
Pilar: Yes.
Anne: -- and then you started with the audiobooks. Interesting about the audiobooks. And I'm going to say that might've been a few years back, right? There was no ACX back then, right? So --
Pilar: No, actually I started with ACX.
Anne: Oh, you did? Okay.
Pilar: So, so it was more recent.
Anne: Oh, okay, so it was recent then.
Pilar: 2012.
Anne: Oh, okay.
Pilar: They had just started 2013. They had --
Anne: Still that's a --
Pilar: -- they hadn't been around that long.
Anne: -- that's a while. Yeah. That's a while. That was when they just started, I believe. So, okay. And right there for audiobooks, that was kind of a, a cool thing because it was online, and you didn't have to necessarily have a demo to present. They were basically just offering you work and you could audition and not necessarily have to present a demo to get work there.
Pilar: Exactly. So I, again, not knowing anything that was back in the day when audiobooks were done in studios.
Anne: Yes, yes.
Pilar: So the publishing companies had their own studios, and you know, the big guys on campus went and they recorded there.
Anne: Exactly, exactly. Now, were you doing, were you doing Spanish or were you doing both English and Spanish?
Pilar: I was doing both. Actually I started out doing English, doing these like really funny romance things. And then I went the other way with Spanish and started doing religious things because somebody asked me to do religious stuff, and this was, and so here's where networking comes in. You never know. You just never know who is going to be somebody who's a valued contact. That's why, and I'll, I'll tell this story really quickly, and so I don't lose my place about this.
When I was working as an extra on "One Life to Live," there was this guy, and I, and I may have mentioned it. And I remember him saying so clearly that he said, you have to be nice to everybody on set. You know, we were just all looking at him like with stars in our eyes because he was so good-looking, and he was just like, you know, he was a series regular. And he said, be nice to everybody. And I never forgot that. So when I went to Colombia, I was very aware that I needed to treat the producer and the director exactly the same as the coffee lady, because the coffee lady, the person who brought me coffee, and that was her only job, she was just as important --
Anne: Oh yeah.
Pilar: -- as the producer.
Anne: Absolutely.
Pilar: You know, it's a courtesy thing. It's a human interaction thing. And I've always been very, very aware of that. But that experience --
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: -- that I had on the set from somebody who was, you know, making, you know, a good amount of money to talk to us who we were just like these little star struck extras was really important.
Anne: See, it's not just a life lesson, right, but a business lesson to be nice to everyone. It's like be nice to the person that picks up the phone. You may think you want to talk --
Pilar: Exactly.
Anne: -- to the boss, but in reality, it all starts with the person who answers the phone or gets you the coffee. You never know.
Pilar: You never know where that person's going to be. So --
Anne: Exactly.
Pilar: -- fast forward to when I would do voiceover dubbing at this one studio, one of the engineers was, he was just such a sweet guy, and we got along really well. And he was so pleasant and jovial. And, you know, whenever he would ask me to do another take, I always did. And you know, if I thought that I could do it better, he would let me do it. You know, if it was just like a little kind of an alteration in, in the way I inflected in my voice. And he said, hey, would you be interested in doing audio books in Spanish? And I was like, sure. And you know, afterwards we spoke, and I did quite a few for him. And, you know, he said, I don't ask everyone this because obviously people can, you know, he, he gets different responses.
Anne: Sure.
Pilar: And so that's why I, I want to emphasize the importance of being really pleasant and nice and courteous to everyone. 'Cause you just, you just never know. And I, I did like four books with him, and that was just something on the side that I did. And I wouldn't have done that otherwise, if I had been like, you know, a bitch on wheels going to the studio.
Anne: And you know what's so interesting though -- let me just try to relate this to today in an online community, when you're communicating with people online and especially in these groups where you think it might be a closed group where you're only talking to voice actors, be nice to everyone, because there are people sitting there watching you, and reading those comments, and making judgements about your comment, if it's not nice, or maybe it's not becoming of a professional. They're watching and you never know who might be looking or listening behind the scenes. So be nice to everyone. I think it's just a wonderful thing to live by. Right? Just be nice to everyone. Be nice.
Pilar: I totally agree with that, Anne, and, and I would go even further because I was listening to somebody about this. When you're on Zoom, you know, it doesn't cost anything to smile.
Anne: True, so true.
Pilar: It really doesn't.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: You can just, you can just be pleasant, and you can have a nice sort of energy to you. I mean, I know we're always in sweats, and it just it's become a way of life. And we're probably going to be doing this for a long time, but there's a certain energy you bring when you come into a Zoom meeting. You know, you can either slouch and you can just be like, uh, you know, and we've all heard them. Everybody on --
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: -- listening to this podcast has heard people who are just like these Nagging Nellies I guess, or the complainers.
Anne: Debbie Downers,
Pilar: Debbie Downers. Debbie Downers. It's like, oh yeah, I'm I'm in voiceover, but I --
Anne: But I can't.
Pilar: -- but I don't have a demo yet. And I haven't --
Anne: I can't do this.
Pilar: -- gotten any work in six months. It's like really, really? Are you kidding? Then why are you even here?
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: You know, it's like, hey, I want to learn. I don't know anything about, oh, I don't know. Let's say you're doing, um, let's say a demo. You want to learn how to do a demo --
Anne: Video games or something.
Pilar: No, I'm thinking of, you know, those slot machine things?
Anne: Oh, casinos.
Pilar: Casinos. They're, they're actually, now that's a new genre that I heard about.
Anne: Yeah, exactly.
Pilar: I was like, oh my gosh.
Anne: Casinos and gaming. Yes. That kind of gaming.
Pilar: Casinos and -- yeah.
Anne: Yup.
Pilar: So it's like, let's say you go in, and you don't know anything about it. Well, hey, you're here to learn. I'm here to learn about casino and gaming. Yay. This is something new. So it's like, I feel like you can always put your best foot forward because it doesn't cost you anything.
Anne: Yeah. You can always learn, and you can always learn.
Pilar: Yeah. Exactly. You can always learn. So --
Anne: You can always learn something.
Pilar: Yeah.
Anne: Even if you're like, oh, I don't know. Like I didn't like this class or -- that's the teacher in me that says, you know, if you're a good student, you can learn anywhere, anywhere.
Pilar: Yup.
Anne: There's always an opportunity to learn.
Pilar: I totally agree. So back to the guy. So I did these four books with him, and somewhere along the way -- so I, I didn't have an audiobook demo. I had a bunch of audio book samples 'cause that's what you do.
Anne: Yup.
Pilar: And the experience at Fafcon, which was just so enriching. And I met some amazing people that I'm still friends with today, I realized everybody was like, oh yeah, the demo this, the demo that. I was like, why in the world do you need a demo? And then after I'd gotten all this information, and then I went home ,and I looked at all, everybody's website that I had met. And I was like, oh, this is our industry's equivalent of a resume.
Anne: Yeah, absolutely.
Pilar: That's basically very simple and quick and dirty explanation. You have to have a demo. So anybody going online, anybody who's considering you -- I just did a session yesterday, and I had a certain kind of demo for this 'cause -- I can't talk about it because obviously it -- now every -- you sign NDAs, wherever you go.
Anne: Absolutely.
Pilar: Um, so I auditioned for this company, and then they said, oh yeah -- he said, so he started talking about the style that he wanted for what we were doing. And he said, yes. And I, from your audition, but especially from your demos.
Anne: That's excellent.
Pilar: I was like, oh, okay. This guy did his homework.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: This guy really looked at my stuff before choosing me, which means that's why my demos have to be in order.
Anne: Absolutely. I'm so glad you said that because there are some people who think that you cannot book off of your demo. And I, I am in disagreement with that because I do believe that people that are doing their homework that are out -- they're searching online. If your demos are sitting there on your website, people listen to them. And I get requests all the time, you know, hey, I love -- can you do the voice in that spot, on your demo, in this particular spot that you're referencing? So I will get people. I know they've listened to the demo and I've booked.
Pilar: In 2020, I booked a year long campaign. I basically paid my rent and then some.
Anne: From a demo.
Pilar: From a demo. I did not audition. I didn't audition for. And I was like, wait a minute. Don't you need? And they were like, no, no. The agent, 'cause I'm so -- I was such a newbie, he was like, no, no, you don't need to audition. I mean, he literally said that to me. No, you idiot. They're booking you off the demo. And, and actually yeah, through my agent, I book off my demo all the time. So it's, I get people will request it because they've listened to the demos. So --
Pilar: Right.
Anne: -- I mean, of course I audition too, like everybody else, but I do book a considerable amount off of my demos.
Pilar: In terms of specifically a bilingual demo, what I did, what I noticed, first I, and I did what everybody does. The, the very first demo I did, I basically just did my spots. That's what I did, you know? 'Cause I, I didn't know any better, so I, okay. I've got a bunch of spots and let me, you know, hook it all together. And I actually got somebody who did it for, you know --
Anne: So for your bilingual demo, right? You --
Pilar: No, for my first demo.
Anne: Okay. First demo, you strung together spots that you had created. Okay.
Pilar: Yeah, exactly, because, you know, that's what you do when you're starting out, and there's nothing wrong with that. But then when I went to Fafcon and I realized, oh, these people actually had this professionally done, you know, the skeptic in me said, oh, come on, really? Why in the world would you need that? And I realized, because that's how it happens in this particular business. It may not happen any in any other business, but I've seen the reason why I've booked work, and why I need that because that's the way, that's the way it is. I mean --
Anne: Well, I think it also shows -- of course, you can put together a demo of spots that you've done already and lots of people do that. But also I think it can show a range. Maybe you get booked for a lot of -- a particular style of spot or a particular read. And I think a demo can showcase a broader range of acting that you can do.
Pilar: Yes.
Anne: And that's where I think that it's really advantageous as well as hooking up with someone who is familiar with what's out there and what's -- a good producer or a demo producer that knows what trends are out there, what companies are looking for and can implement that on the demo as well.
Pilar: Exactly. You just hit the nail on the head. You need somebody, you need a director. That's what a demo producer is.
Anne: Yeah, yeah.
Pilar: They know better than you do. So, you know, it's like you go in stages. So at first I thought, oh, I'll do my own demo. And then I realized, no, I need somebody who can direct me because they're going to showcase my voice to the best --
Anne: Yes.
Pilar: -- of my ability rather than me trying to figure it out because --
Anne: You're too close to it.
Pilar: -- the dirty little secret is that we don't know how we sound --
Anne: That's right.
Pilar: -- really and truly.
Anne: We're very close.
Pilar: We need somebody else. We need somebody else to sit there and tell us, no, no, no, you want the cosmetic read. This is, you know, you want the automotive read. You want the, you know, the Olive Garden read; they're all different. So after that I was like, okay, I'm going to bite the bullet. And I actually did, I had, uh, I did a kind of a double thing because, um, Bob Bergen was teaching a weekend class, and this just kind of came about up in San Francisco. And I had already booked time with Chuck Duran to do my demos because I wanted to go there. This was obviously before, 'cause now you can do it. You don't even, you don't need to --
Anne: You can do it online.
Pilar: Yeah. You can do it totally online. But I was like, no, I want it -- and I wanted to go to LA because there was something about it --
Anne: Sure. Well, there's something about the experience of being in a studio too in LA recording a demo that all you have to do is perform. And this is a really wonderful experience.
Pilar: Totally.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: So the demo that we did -- so I asked Chuck, I said, you know, I'd really like to do two. I'd like to do one in Spanish and one in English, because I was told don't ever, ever mix them. That was the first thing I was told. So I was like, okay, I'm not going to mix them. So we did it in English and in Spanish. So he did the English copy, and he actually speaks some Spanish. And so then I translated some of them and then we came up with some other things. And so then I had two demos. It was great.
Anne: Two identical demos?
Pilar: No.
Anne: Okay.
Pilar: Not identical.
Anne: You had different spots in Spanish then?
Pilar: Yeah. Some overlapped, but some did not. And you know, he was very strategic about it. So that was, that was, that was fine. Then I realized that I wanted to have a bilingual demo. I was just stubborn. I was like, I want a bilingual demo.
Anne: So wait --
Pilar: This is what I want.
Anne: So what do you consider a bilingual demo? Do you mean one that is both English and Spanish --
Pilar: Yes.
Anne: -- in the same demo? Oh, okay.
Pilar: And --
Anne: All right. So you are a bilingual talent that has a separate English demo and a separate Spanish demo. Now a bilingual demo means you're going to have both English and Spanish.
Pilar: Yes.
Anne: Okay.
Pilar: And I have -- if you listen to my bilingual demo, there's a little bit of a, of a little bit of an accent because that's something else that I get all the time. I don't really have an accent in either language.
Anne: Speak English with a Spanish accent.
Pilar: Yes. All the time.
Anne: Okay.
Pilar: That's what I get all the time.
Anne: Okay.
Pilar: So then that became almost a third category, and I did that actually online.
Anne: So that's a separate demo or just a separate --
Pilar: That's a separate demo.
Anne: Okay.
Pilar: That's a separate demo.
Anne: All by itself, the English with the Spanish accent --
Pilar: All by itself. The bilingual, yep.
Anne: Okay, but let's --
Pilar: But not all of them.
Anne: Okay, but --
Pilar: They're not -- so there's English with a Spanish accent. There's English, normal English. And then there's Spanish. They're all mixed in, in that specific bilingual demo.
Anne: Okay.
Pilar: And so I was told by my -- and so then whatever the agent happened, and they said, no, no, no, we don't want that. We don't want that on. You know, we just want the English and the Spanish. We want it separated. But I tell you, I have booked from that bilingual demo.
Anne: Right, which is sitting on your website.
Pilar: So -- exactly. And so it's kind of like when you go in, when you walk into a store, not everybody's going to buy the same thing.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: But you want to have pants, and you want to have a dress --
Anne: Well, people consume --
Pilar: -- and you want to have a jumper.
Anne: Yes. People consume your audio differently --
Pilar: Yup.
Anne: -- right?
Pilar: Right.
Anne: Agents will consume or deliver your audio separately, right? Or people that go to an agent website may shop differently than people that get to your website, in which case I like to have everything available on your website because you never know who's shopping. It could be an owner of a small company --
Pilar: Exactly.
Anne: -- or it could be a casting director or an agent. And so they're very different buyers because casting agents and talented -- that's what they do for a living eight hours a day, all day long. The owner of the small pizza place, you know, down the road, he doesn't cast voices all day long. He just knows what he hears and he knows what he likes. And so he does a Google search, comes up with your website, right, is bilingual voice talent. Boom. Here's your demo that is sitting there that maybe your agents didn't want to present both ways. And he says, that's it. That's exactly what I need.
Pilar: And here's the funny part. And I can't 100% confirm, but I suspect that -- 'cause of course, you know, when I, when I signed, I gave them all the demos. I'm pretty sure that the demo that they heard that booked me that job in 2020 -- it was just like an ongoing thing -- they booked me on the strength of the bilingual demo, where they heard me speak in English and in Spanish at the same time and with an accent.
Anne: Yeah, yeah.
Pilar: So don't be afraid of the having the accent. So, you know, I run into people all the time. So they, they're Spanish speakers, and they speak with a little bit of an accent. And then there are English speakers who have a little bit of an accent in Spanish, but specifically to the Spanish speakers who speak English, don't be afraid to put different ranges --
Anne: Yeah, yeah.
Pilar: -- of your speaking in English, because like Sofía Vergara, she's Colombian. Very nice. She really puts it on thick in, in that, in the, in the whatever it was --
Anne: "Modern Family."
Pilar: "Modern Family." She doesn't speak like that all the time. If you listen to her, she puts it on thick in some movies and pulls back, 'cause she knows how to do that. You don't have to have a perfect accent in English or a perfect accent in Spanish either.
Anne: Well, you know what's so interesting, and I can see where your agent might say, no, we don't want it mixed. Right? We want one, that's English, one that's Spanish, because traditionally we've moved away from, if you remember in, in narration -- I'm going, I'll make the comparison with narration demos. It used to be a narration demos, you put every genre in there. You had like a documentary style. You had an e-learning, you had a corporate, you had, you know, all different styles of narration.
So it became all mixed up into one. And then we became very target specific. And so then it became, okay, you need a separate demo for an explainer, separate demo for corporate narration, separate demo for e-learning. But when you're talking bilingual, you have a client, a customer that may need multiple versions of Spanish speaking language. And so I think when you mix it together in English, English with a Spanish accent, Spanish, you're giving them all of the range that you have in that language.
Pilar: Exactly. I --
Anne: And that makes sense to me that that would work for you.
Pilar: Yeah. Yeah. And I've, I've had -- I've been in sessions where I speak English with no accent, and they want a run of the copy that way. Then they want a run of the copy with a little bit of an accent, and then they want to run of the copy with a lot of an accent. So I'm giving them three choices because --
Anne: Exactly.
Pilar: -- they don't know at the time how they're going to place it for those markets.
Anne: Right. And the markets may change. Right?
Pilar: Yeah.
Anne: The markets may --
Pilar: Exactly.
Anne: -- be more localized or, or regionalized, or I think it really just goes with the territory. Now, I guess my question is if they use it multiple times, are they paying you multiple?
Pilar: Yeah.
Anne: You know, that's what you want to make sure, which is why your agent helps.
Pilar: Yes.
Anne: And, and --
Pilar: That's where --
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: -- that's where it gets tricky because I've really only been doing the bilingual work this way, to the extent that I've been doing it since I came out to Los Angeles.
Anne: Yeah, yeah.
Pilar: Usually it was that you either do the spot in English or you do the spot in Spanish, before I had an agent. You know like for example, on the pay-to-plays.
Anne: Yep.
Pilar: You don't really have, you don't get that oh, let's -- once in a very long while, but mostly it's like, okay, Spanish speaker, Latin American speaker or American speaker.
Anne: But if you think about it too, I would imagine the type of customer that would go through an agency or casting director to find a voice, they know the target market of who they're advertising to more so than, let's say, somebody on a pay-to-play. Right? They're just like, oh, I need Spanish. Maybe, that's just my guess, an educated guess because, and they come to the agent because they're much more target specific. It would seem to me that would make sense.
Pilar: I agree, because I think that a lot of the times the ad agency is looking for specific markets. So if it's Florida, it's going to be different from --
Anne: Exactly.
Pilar: -- Southern California.
Anne: Exactly. You're going to need a different Spanish that's in Florida than is in California, which makes a whole lot of sense to me. Wow.
Pilar: And it's different than Arizona too.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: So it's like, you're talking totally different markets.
Anne: This is so enlightening for me because what's cool is that I have questions for you because I have no real experience with how to market as a bilingual voice talent, because I'm not one. But yet you tell me your experiences, and it's, so it makes so much sense really for every one of us in the voiceover business, how we need to be very target specific. We need to be able to serve the -- our clients and our clients have many different needs, many different demographics, and the better that we can serve them and showcase, right, through our demos, through auditioning, how we can serve that community, then obviously the more chance we have to get the gig, and you know, that's what it's about.
Pilar: Yeah. And I, I just to, just to piggyback on that end, let's say you don't speak another language. Well, get your accents ready.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: Because a lot of the times I am called to do with a slight Southern accent or with a British accent. There are tons of things, whether it's the video game world or even commercial copy. So having an ear, developing that ear, looking at YouTube videos, there are tons of YouTube videos -- I think is important to listen for, let's say, a specific regionalism --
Anne: Right.
Pilar: -- because you never know what you're going to get in the voiceover. And I think one of the worst things to do is to get an audition and then be scrambling because --
Anne: Absolutely.
Pilar: -- you're like, oh my gosh, I don't know how to do this.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: Let me go look online. How am I going to do this? And then you're just, you're adding all that stuff. It's like --
Anne: Sure.
Pilar: -- why not take some time, take a look at it, listen to it, you know, practice, you know?
Anne: Well, and let me add the caveat here because of, you know, the climate past couple of years that if the casting specs request a native UK Londoner, then perhaps that's not necessarily something you audition for, if it's in the casting specs. But I think it's important that it starts there. Because again, we want, if people are looking for a native speaker or a native ethnicity, then I think that -- that we should respect those casting specs. And also that's a question, do we do a British accent these days? That's an interesting question. Are we taking away work if we do that, if we're not native? That is -- it's, it's a tough question that I think everybody is kind of wrapping their heads around, what is right in this industry these days?
Pilar: So I think that it is very important to distinguish and to be upfront about it because here's the thing. If you present, the person on the other end listening is going to know immediately if you are not a native speaker.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: So, I mean, that's just down the line. So I'm very, I'm very clear on the fact that I say anywhere, I, I, you know, on my resume, whatever, wherever I'm a native speaker in Spanish, I speak French fluently.
Anne: Yes.
Pilar: So if you drop me in the middle of Paris, I will not starve. I will be able to get myself anywhere. And I'm not --
Anne: I'm so glad you made that distinction. Yes.
Pilar: Yeah, I'm not a native speaker because native means I was born there or spent most of my life speaking French, and I haven't.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: So I can't, I can't say that with any kind of authority.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: Now in terms of accents, I have run across it. I, it's really more, I run across it much more with video games and especially animation --
Anne: Yes.
Pilar: -- where they're going to ask you --
Anne: Yup. They're going to ask you to have an accent.
Pilar: -- for a Russian accent. And that's really more of a character --
Anne: Yes.
Pilar: -- kind of a situation rather than this is a person of authority --
Anne: Sure, absolutely.
Pilar: -- where commercial copy comes in.
Anne: But again, that might be, and I'm just thinking, right, that could be come more of a discussion as we move on --
Pilar: Yes.
Anne: -- as well.
Pilar: Agreed. Yes.
Anne: So wonderful thoughts on that, and Pilar, of course, it's always a pleasure. I learn so much on every one of these episodes. Thank you so much.
Pilar: Well, you're my marketing guru, so there we go.
Anne: Well, hey BOSSes, I'm going to give a great, big shout-out to our sponsor, ipDTL. You too can connect like a BOSS and find out more at ipdtl.com. Have an amazing week, you guys, and we'll see you next week. Bye.
Pilar: Hasta la vista, baby.
>> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.