The Harry Truth: Protect Your Voice.

And now, wise words from the Sennheiser Sensei himself…Harry Legg!

If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance that you are doing or hope to do imaging VO work.  Imaging VO is my primary bread and butter and I feel fortunate to have a piece of that niche in the overall VO world.  I know many of our Benztown VO talents are in the same boat.  Whenever I voice a commercial, trailer, corporate narration and so on – it’s all extra cash that wasn’t expected. There is a temptation to take any of this work that comes along.

Recently, I have been offered a couple of nice paying projects for products that just struck me wrong.  I won’t rip on any in particular – but to give you the general idea – they were a type of male supplement pills.  These are the types of spots that run ad nauseam on AM talk stations.  One of the projects was also for a TV infomercial for a similar product.  It would have paid sizeable money.  However, I had to stop and think – Do I want to be the voice that becomes an irritant in hawking these products on radio and TV?  How will this affect the stations in which I’m the imaging voice.  It can’t be a positive thing.  In order to not have Program Directors irritated that their station voice is also the voice of XYZ supplement pills, I decided to turn down thousands of dollars – even though contractually, I am free to voice these projects.  I feel completely the same about political ads – regardless of which side of the aisle they are on.  As the imaging voice of not only music stations but also News/Talk radio stations and TV stations, I totally avoid this problem area.  If you are an imaging voice or want to be a station imaging voice, I believe these issues are far more important to consider than if you are only doing commercial, narration and the other VO categories.

Protect your voice and only lend it to projects that work well with everything else you do.