#Honesty in advertising. Whew. If only the world was that simple.
So I have a confession for you all: I've been 30 years old for a good number of years now, and in all 30-something of those 30 years, I've never eaten anything from Carl's Jr.
...until just the other day. If you asked me what I knew of Carl's Jr, this would be about the only thing I could tell you:
I know what you're thinking:
That burger looked huge next to her face!
I thought the same thing, too.
Maybe that's the trick behind the commercial. Get somebody tiny next to the burger to make it look big?
And that's all that I knew. They made a commercial with Paris Hilton.
We're all used to ads deceiving us, it's sadly just a repeating theme in this crazy world of ours. One of my favorite scenes from a movie touches on this subject.
(In the movie Falling Down, Michael Douglas plays the role of a bit of an unhinged fellow who is a little more (irrationally) pro-active about some of the frustrations we share in our everyday lives. I love this scene for its absurdity and delivery.)
Fortunately, my experience at Carl's Jr was nothing at all like it was in Falling Down. There was no submachine gun, no argument over breakfast, and everybody's food stayed down.
More importantly, my burger looked a lot like this:
No you mook, the burger did not come with Paris Hilton. So original.
And while the burger also didn't come with a swimsuit for me to wear or a fancy car to wash, the experience did include a hedgehog keeping warm in my vest pocket while I ate my burger inside of an aging Toyota Camry with a pretty lady - both of which need to be washed. THE CAR AND THE HEDGEHOG! NOT THE LADY!! OW, OW, OW.
Did you hear what I said?? No! Not about washing things! I said that the burger looked like the commercial. It was enormous. I could see each individual ingredient beautifully completing the burger's structure in all of its glory. And it was good! And though it didn't give me chest pain, I still feel like I got great value from the experience.
IT WAS AS ADVERTISED.
Now I don't want to say integrity is dead in the world of advertising, but I will absolutely say that it's an endangered species. When you find an honest dentist, an honest lawyer, mechanic, contractor - you name it - you basically have one for life. Integrity has value, and it's a lifelong value that pays dividends. It's money you don't waste having to shop around or fix things that get screwed up because you were duped.
Hiring a quality #voiceover artist is no different! Once you lock a good one in, it's a sigh of relief and a breath of fresh air for some people.
You want one that:
Has #demos that sound right for your needs
Feels right for you when you interact with them
Delivers a product that meets or exceeds the #expectations set by their advertisements
Things can and absolutely do go wrong at each one of those points in the process of finding the right voiceover talent. Don't cut those corners if it's quality you're after! And if you're a voiceover artist, be sure you are painting a #fair picture of who you are and what you offer so you don't disappoint and jeopardize relationships with your potential future clients! Are you promising #Paris #Hilton eating an enormous Carl's Jr burger and delivering a Whammyburger? A bait-and-switch could lead you to a lot of dead-ends and headaches if you under-deliver.
At the end of the day, everybody wants #value for their time. Make sure you're valuing both yours and your client's by investing in quality, because if they see value from their end, too, they might just come back!
DON'T SETTLE FOR WHAMMYBURGER!