​Podcasting has exploded. It’s been around so long now that many people don’t even realize that the word “podcast” has its roots in the word “iPod.” Which doesn’t even exist anymore. 
 
But you’re not interested in etymology. You want to build your business and make more money. Sure, you could create and host your own podcast—quite the lift—or you could essentially ride the coat-tails of someone else who already has a big following, and grab a little bit of that love for yourself. 
 
If only it were that easy. 
 
What are the odds? 
 
The sad reality of today’s podcast landscape (“podscape”?) is that the numbers are driven by popularity. Media exposure, once it gets going, can snowball. But it’s hard to get it going. 
 
We hate to employ this analogy, but it’s useful nonetheless: If you’re some business wonk, how many people will follow you? How many companies will be lining up for paid sponsorships? 
 
Now replace the words “business wonk” with “Kardashian.” 
 
Ouch. 
 
As we’d said, sad reality. 
 
This is not to say that business-related podcasts can’t have influence or big audiences; they can. But before you aim to be a guest on Acquired, for example, set your sights more realistically. You, too, can build momentum and rise up the pecking order. 
 
Who are you? (And who cares?)
 
An easy way to approach the I-want-to-be-a-podcast-guest-to-promote-my-business challenge is to look at it through the eyes of the podcast host. Why would they want you? Why would you help them? If you can definitively answer that question, you’re in good shape. 
 
Some considerations: 

• Are you a thought leader in your industry? 

 

• Are you the inventor or creator of some kind of breakthrough product, service, or solution? 

 

• Are you a published author on your topic of expertise? 

 

• How many years of experience can you claim? 

 

• Are you telegenic? 

 
The more of the above boxes you can check, the better. 
 
Money can’t buy happiness
 
It wasn’t long ago that we would advise clients to reach out to attractive podcasts on their own—usually in the form of a note from, say, an underling who would say “Hey! I think my boss would be a great guest for your podcast! Here’s why!” And then that underling would rattle off as many of the bullet points we’d listed above, as possible. 
 
Dirty little secret: No underlings were harmed in the making of that email. They were actually ghost-penned by—you guessed it—Copel Communications. 
 
Looking back, those days were quaint. 
 
As we’d said at the outset, podcasting has exploded. There are well over four million podcasts out there today. Not episodes. But actual podcasts. And the good ones—the ones you want to be on—are overwhelmed by entreaties from wanna-be guests, 24/7. 
 
So what do you do? 
 
There are actually agencies out there, today, which specialize in booking you as a guest on podcasts. No kidding: Google them and you’ll find them. 
 
And you’ll quickly see a pattern, too: 
 
They’ll often offer tiers of service, for, say, booking you on two podcasts per month. Or four, for a higher fee. 
 
But here’s the catch: You can’t simply hire one of these agencies. Throw money at them—it won’t work. Because they need to vet you first.
 
It’s like any talent agent. They can only take your money if they can sell you in the first place.
 
Which brings us back, once again, to all of those bullet points we’d listed above. What do you think those podcast-guest-booking agencies’ applications look like? Yup. Just like our bullet points. 
 
We can’t guarantee that we can get you “signed” by a booking firm. But we can help you burnish your credentials and make an honest assessment of your odds. 
 
Contact us and let’s talk. 

​Sometimes, the success of your creative marketing hinges on some decidedly un-creative input. 
 
Here’s a true story. 
 
We were recently tasked with scripting a video for a client of ours. Granted, we have to cloak this in anonymity, but you’ll get the gist: 
 
The client of ours is a consultancy. They had created a breakthrough technical solution for one of their clients. Our job was to script a video, showing the whole world this breakthrough solution—while also anonymizing our client’s client. 
 
Follow? 
 
On the surface, this is a pretty straightforward assignment. We had to write a script which would show prospective clients (for the consultancy) how amazing this technical solution is. But it quickly became trickier than you might think. 
 
Our point of contact at the consultancy was one of the super-sharp technical people who had actually worked on this breakthrough solution. Let’s call him Steve. 
 
Steve was our source of input. And so Steve—not terribly shockingly—told us all about this breakthrough solution. Every nut and bolt. Every feature. Every output. Every paradigm-shattering spec. 
 
And we couldn’t write the script.
 
Know why? 
 
Think about it. 
 
Our task was to write a brief—as in, two- to three-minute—video, dramatically showcasing this breakthrough solution. 
 
Yet what had Steve, in all his ardent energy, failed to provide us? 
 
Of course: Act One.
 
Huh? 
 
Two sides to every story (and marketing piece)
 
A video like this—or any marketing piece like this—should follow what we call “a two-act structure.” Steve had given us all of the input for Act Two. That is, the solution.
 
But of course! Now it’s super obvious, isn’t it? 
 
A solution solves a problem.
 
What was the problem?? 
 
We asked Steve. And he said “Well, our client couldn’t do X.” And yes, he technically answered our question, but he didn’t exactly help us. 
 
And here we get to the gist of this article. Steve is not a creative pro. That’s not his job. He excels at plenty of other stuff, and the world is a better place because of it. 
 
But he needed a little help, a little nudging, from us, to give us the input we’d craved for Act One of this script. 
 
And so we asked him, “Could you tell us more, please? Why couldn’t your client do X? What were all the contributing factors? We want to know, as much as possible, about the sheer chaos they were confronting before your solution came along. We want the ‘Before’ to be horrendous! Inundate us with details! The messier, the better!” 
 
You could see the light dawning in Steve’s eyes. Of course! The messier, the better! Because The Great Wonderful Solution isn’t so great or wonderful unless it really clears what appear to be insurmountable hurdles. 
 
Once Steve got it, he got it. After all, who would know that client’s “before” situation better than him? He piled on with gory details, and voilà! We were able to pen a truly effective video. 
 
Clearly, you can extrapolate a lot from this little story. Marketing and advertising routinely require creativity. And just as routinely, your input sources may not be people who are naturally creative. 
 
But they can be coaxed. The information is there. You just need to tease it out. 
 
Need help with a creative challenge like this? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help! 

​We know a talented web designer who told us that websites age in dog years. That may well be true of the technology. But in this article, we’re going to talk about your branding and your messaging. 
 
If you’re considering a refresh of your site, or perhaps even a wholly new site, this article is for you. Even if a potential rework is way in the future, you can still learn some good time- and expense-saving tips here. So read on! 
 
Website in the spotlight
 
We have a client whose business recently pivoted from serving mid-level customers to very high-end customers. (We can’t give too much detail here, but there should be enough info for you to follow the story.) 
 
The high-end prospects would be more profitable for our client. Making this choice to pivot was the result of a lot of soul-searching and analytical number-crunching. It represented a switch from serving a greater number of decent-revenue-providing clientele to a smaller number of awesome-revenue-providing clientele. 
 
As we’d said, we’re gauzing up this story. But you now know enough to follow it—and to see the parallels that exist to your situation, and your website. 
 
Ah yes. The website. The moment this client of ours decided to pursue a newer, higher-end audience, their existing website (not to mention all of their other marketing materials) immediately became outdated. It was way “beneath” their new audience—and wholly lacking in the newly-refined service offerings they had developed. 
 
Our client knew that this would be coming. Recall all of the aforementioned soul-searching and number-crunching. 
 
So they called on us to help them create the new website. We don’t do this alone. We work closely with the client. They have a great web designer, with a full team, that we love. We also have some great video editors to help create the site’s embedded content (which we scripted). 
 
But here, in this article, we’d like to walk you through the process we employed—and get to those elusive “pilot pages” that we’d mentioned in the title. 
 
Starting wide
 
As we’d noted, the client had decided to serve a new audience. And if you’ve read any of our articles here at Copel Communications, you can practically do a drinking game for each time we mention “taking a customer-back approach.” We’re passionate about this. (Because it works!) 
 
In other words, start with the customer. Explore their needs. Then work backward to the marketing strategy and tactics. 
 
So here are the big things we did with this client, in order:

• Deeper dive customer discovery. Through a series of structured strategy sessions, we really dived into the new prospects they were targeting. What are their pain points? What are they doing now? What are their best alternative options, besides out client? What might “trigger” them to make a switch? Who are the secondary targets we needn’t address directly, but wouldn’t mind attracting? Who are the “tire kickers” we want to avoid engaging with? (We have a great article on that topic, by the way.) 

 

• Narrative creative concepts. Once we had nailed down the customer persona (sometimes called the “avatar” or ICP for Ideal Customer Profile), we worked up a number of written descriptions of what the new website would look and feel like. These “narrative creative concepts” are very time- and cost-efficient. They describe the theme, tone, and feel of a proposed new site’s treatment, talking about the imagery, copy, amount of white space, navigation, and so on. And we provided several to choose from, each with a slightly different creative approach. The client then picked their favorite. 

 

• Website wireframe. We then wrote this up, outline-style, and reviewed it with the client—moving, re-prioritizing, and adding and cutting as needed, until we had a nice tight version. (Want to learn more about how we do this—and you can, too? We’ve got a nice article you can check out.) 

 

• Pilot pages. No, we’re not gonna describe them here in this little bullet. These warrant their own subhead. 

 
Exciting new subhead: Pilot pages!
 
Mind you, all of the work we’d described above is upstream of the web designer. Why? Two reasons: 

• One: It’s essential to steer them in the right direction for what they will undertake. Not “kinda/sorta the right direction.” And that’s because of Reason Two: 

 

• Two: That’s a lot of people, working hard. It ain’t cheap. We’re frugal with our customers’ marketing spend here at Copel Communications. 

 
So what are these teased-to-death-by-now “pilot pages”? It’s actually really simple. Despite the wonderfully described tone from the chosen narrative creative concept, it’s time to create actual public-facing website copy at this point. 
 
So should you unleash your writer—even if it’s us—to pen all of these pages at once? You have, after all, an approved concept and a signed-off wireframe. 
 
Answer: No. 
 
Again, you want to be efficient and frugal. So go through your wireframe and pick out just a few—two, maybe three—pages that would be good tests of the final tone-and-feel verbiage. These will be your “pilot pages.” 
 
They’re easy to choose—but hard to write. Expect a bunch of revisions. But once you lock them down, the other pages go way, way faster. 
 
The obvious one to start with is the home page. That’s mandatory. After that, it depends on which one you think would be 1) difficult, 2) representative, and 3) a good model for subsequent/deeper pages. That last point is especially important if you’re going to be engaging a team of writers: You want them to be able to reference the approved pilot pages, and use them to make sure they’re sticking to the proper tone. 
 
Incidentally, once you have your approved pilot pages, you can then feed them, with confidence (along with the approved narrative creative concept and wireframe), to your web designer. From that point, it’s off to the races. 
 
Need help with your next website project? Contact us. We’ve done lots of these, and would be delighted to help with yours. 

We can’t count how many corporate videos we write here at Copel Communications. That’s because video is simply a killer medium, however you look at it: 

• It’s dense, combining visuals and narration faster and more succinctly than any other medium. 

 

• It’s low-hurdle consumption, since it’s way easier for your prospect to watch your video than, say, read your white paper. 

 

• Extra bonus: The hosting platforms out there really love it and favor it, aiding and abetting your SEO efforts. 

 
But video can be a killer in other ways, too. Like production budget. Turnaround time. And keeping the project on track as it goes. 
 
In this article, we’re going to explain a way to keep your next corporate video on-track, using a technique we’ve developed, honed, and proven over the years. 
 
Note that we say “corporate video.” The technique we’re about to describe doesn’t work for narrative films, home movies, or Hollywood blockbusters. But it’s great for videos you need to make quickly and cost-effectively—and which, more than anything, sell.
 
The old-school approach
 
A video script is formatted in two columns: one for audio, and one for video. Very straightforward. (And wholly different from, for example, the WGA format for screenplays, which is structured to support dialogue being delivered by actors within a given scene.)
 
But if you ever looked at a video script, you’ll know, without even reading it, that it’s hard to read. It’s like looking at the blueprint of a jetliner and trying to figure out what makes it fly. 
 
There’s stuff all over the place: Indications for on-screen titles, transitions, sound effects, music cues, suggestions for stock footage, directions for layering of motion graphics, et cetera, et cetera. 
 
It’s a very useful tool for a video editor. Or a voice-over artist. But for you (or for your client), it’s pretty indigestible. 
 
The old-school approach is straightforward: Start with that script.
 
And that’s the rule we’re about to break. 
 
Going rogue
 
There actually is somewhat of an analogy for the work-around we’re about to describe. And it’s based not in corporate video, but in feature films. 
 
In Hollywood, it’s known as the “treatment.” For our corporate purposes, we’ll call it “the spine.” 
 
It goes something like this: 
 
A Hollywood screenplay is typically just over 100 pages long (with the rule of thumb being one page for each minute of on-screen time). The treatment is a short narrative description of what happens in the finished movie. Like a synopsis. It could be a page; it could be five pages. Regardless, it’s quicker and easier to read than a 100-page screenplay. And it can be useful in getting people with limited time to wrap their heads around the movie-to-be. 
 
The treatment, as we’d noted, is a narrative, third-person account of the story and its characters. But a good creative treatment should be fun to read, and typically will include some choice snippets of dialogue, to help convey the mood and “sell” the piece. 
 
The ”spine,” for your corporate video, is similar. But it’s even simpler. The original name we’d given it was the “audio spine,” and that should tell you a ton. 
 
Think about it. Your corporate video doesn’t feature, say, two characters toughing it out in an argument or bar-room brawl. It shows stuff that you do, and a voice-over narrator is your guide. 
 
Ta-dah. That’s where the “audio spine” comes from. 
 
If you can write that announcer track, you’ve cleared a huge hurdle. 
 
Plus, you have something that, unlike a two-column video script, is incredibly easy to digest, regardless of the reader/audience. 
 
Hence, the “spine.” 
 
On your way
 
So the trick is to write that “spine” first. Iterate and improve it via review and revision. Then get sign-off on it.
 
From there, you can paste the approved “spine” into the “Audio” column of your to-be video script. At that point, it becomes straightforward—although of course, not simple—to populate the rest of the script with visuals, sound effects, and all the other elements we’d mentioned above. 
 
The nice thing about starting with a “spine” is that it’s fast and easy. It locks the most important element of your video script early. Which keeps all the subsequent steps on-track, and thus faster and better cost-contained. 
 
We use this approach a lot. So should you. 
 
Need help with video scripting? We’d love to come to your rescue. Contact us today to get started. 

​Every hear of a “paper edit”? Probably not. 
 
Let’s dive, quickly, into the topic you tuned in for: Making the easiest marketing videos you’ll likely ever make. 
 
It gets better. They’ll also be among the least expensive to produce. 
 
And they’ll also be among the most powerful. 
 
Salivating yet? Let’s get started. 
 
Recycling is good for the planet… and your business
 
A client of ours recently recently pitched a new prospect via a Zoom call. Specifically, they “ran the demo” of the company’s offerings, which included both a PowerPoint slide deck and a demo of specific SaaS (software-as-a-service) offerings. 
 
The call went great. Our client closed the deal. What could be better than that? 
 
How about closing lots of deals? 
 
From the exact same call.
 
You’re smart. You’re already way ahead of us here. Why do we even try to build any suspense? LOL! 
 
The key: Our client recorded the Zoom call. With the prospect’s permission, of course. Important point: the recording did not show the prospect on screen. Only our client, who was presenting. 
 
That recording is worth its weight in gold. It’s a verbatim capture of the best possible sales pitch, with our client hitting it out of the park. 
 
The entire video ran about 20 minutes. 
 
And in it, our client—the one who was running the demo—was making killer point after killer point, with each one nicely illustrated by either a powerful preso slide or quick SaaS demo. 
 
We watched this video, and realized that it was marketing gold, being served to us on a platter. 
 
The paper edit
 
“Paper edit” is an old-school video editing term, which surprisingly isn’t so old-school or even outdated. It’s exactly what we created in this case. And it’s what you can do, too. 
 
(You know you’ve got some good recorded Zoom pitches by now. And if you don’t, you know you’re just itching to record your next one.) 
 
Here’s the task. Take that 20 minutes of raw footage, and convert it into as many little McNugget-sized videos as you can. They should run anywhere from about ten to 30 seconds each. 
 
So you just need to park the video in a window on one side of your screen, and a blank Word doc on the other. Watch the video and look for the organic “start” and “end” points of each little mini-video. Write down the time codes for each. Then come up with a title for that specific mini video. Lather, rinse, repeat, and you’ll have a “paper edit” which you can hand off, along with the big raw-footage file, to your favorite/least-expensive video editor. You will have done the heavy lifting; at this point, your editor simply needs to follow your instructions. 
 
They’ll need to create a master “set of bookends” first: This will be the opening title card, underlying music bed, and tail-end/call-to-action (CTA) title card. Once you approve those, you’re off to the races. Your editor will be able to crank these out like a machine.
 
In our case, the 20 minutes of raw footage yielded more than 20 different short videos. They were so simple to create, that we didn’t even need our usual high-end editor for this assignment. Rather, we handed off the footage and the paper-edit doc to our client’s digital marketing firm; they were able to make these little vids for us—and put them to use, too, since they were able to easily fold them into the account’s digital marketing strategy. 
 
Sure, we continue to make slick, highly-produced videos for this same client. But they’re more expensive and less frequent. These little videos are awesome for keeping the world informed and teased, while easily building up your social presence on platforms like LinkedIn, simultaneously boosting the brand and impressions. 
 
Need help with an assignment like this, or others? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

​This article was originally going to be about developing a production process for video scripts. But because of the way things turned out at our client, this one is taking a decidedly more valuable turn. For you. 
 
We’re going to talk about something that you can create, for your clients, as a gift, which will win you follow-on business. We can’t say “guaranteed,” but pretty darned close. 
 
What’s this have to do with video scripting? 
 
From production to presents
 
A client of ours—incidentally, we typically get our best education and insights from our clients, as they’re a pretty ingenious lot—had tasked us with making a series of videos. 
 
Here’s the genesis: Our client does a lot of similar projects for its clients. And when it completes each one, it ends up with some raw screen-capture video footage, documenting the project. 
 
The job they handed to us: Turn that boring screen-capture footage into a compelling video that sells. We’d anonymize these, and our client would post them on their YouTube channel, since they’re great little sales vehicles which show off exactly what they do, in about two minutes each. 
 
So far, so straightforward. Right? 
 
But here’s the stroke of genius: This same client of ours decided to create a customized version of the same video for their client. Granted, we need to over-simplify here, but think of it this way: Upon completing the project, our client (a consultancy) produced and delivered—without charging an extra dime for it—a custom video for their client, showcasing the work they just completed. As a gift.
 
With our services folded in, the finished video was very “Hollywood”: slick voiceover, music, effects, etc. The V.O. goes something like this: “Working with Consultancy [our client], ABC Business [their client] has been able to do something amazing, which you’ll see, firsthand, in this video.”  
 
And then it would effectively go into the demo. 
 
Private viewing
 
Whereas videos made for YouTube are intentionally created to reach the largest audience possible (BTW, we worked on one which, as of this writing, has attracted 61 million views), this video was for an audience of, oh, about five people. 
 
Yep. That’s it. A slick, high-quality, seemingly big-budget video to be seen by: The CEO. The CFO. The project sponsor. And a couple others. That’s it. 
 
This video was a gift of our client’s, to their client. It said “Thank you for letting us work with you. You may not have been in the trenches for this one, like the Project Sponsor was, but we’d like the Executive Leadership Team to see just what we did for you, and how great it came out.” 
 
Can you guess what happened next? 
 
Roll out the red carpet
 
The Executive Leadership Team audience, you likely won’t be surprised to learn, was positively delighted by this little video. 
 
Do you think they kept it to themselves? 
 
Au contraire. They demanded that it be posted, enterprise-wide, on the company intranet. Sent out to all the zillions of leaders and team members. 
 
And therein lies the gift that keeps on giving. 
 
The Executive Leadership Team felt great. They got a rush from this video… to the point where they wanted more. 
 
Want another video? Sure! Book another project.
 
And what about all those other leaders in the company who now got to see the video? They want their own projects, too! 
 
Some of them, incidentally, ended up leaving the company and going elsewhere. Guess which vendor stuck in their heads as especially helpful when they landed their new gigs? 
 
You can, too
 
This is a shockingly easy deliverable to create. Our purposely anonymized story above should inspire you: You can make these, too. And you should. They’re an absolute killer when it comes to burnishing your brand… and helping you win follow-on work. 
 
Of course, videos like this do require creative scripting and creative ways to make them look like a million bucks, while costing next to nothing. 
 
That’s where we come in. Contact us and let’s talk. 

​Boy is this ever a “modern problems” topic. As a former agency creative director, we’re used to, well, directing creative people. 
 
But nowadays, very often, you can’t. 
 
You can’t speak to them. You can’t see them. And yet you need to direct, and coach, and motivate them, to do their best work. 
 
What gives? 
 
The gig economy cometh
 
Back in the day, we’d walk around the bull pen and engage with our artists at their drawing boards (yikes!) and computers. We’d go to recording studios and direct voiceover talent and jingle artists. We’d direct photographers on photo shoots, videographers on video shoots, and so on. Very straightforward. 
 
Enter Upwork. And Fiverr. And their ilk. The vaunted “Gig Economy,” wherein people can work, and make money, from anywhere. 
 
We’ve weighed in on this topic before. It’s a double-edged blade, which democratizes the availability of talent purveyors to buyers, while also (often) encouraging a race-to-the-bottom mentality when it comes to pricing and (often) quality. 
 
We won’t get into that here. What we will get into is the way that these platforms, such as Upwork and Fiverr, force you to work. They expressly forbid the talent on their platforms from engaging with the people who hire them… outside of the limited messaging capabilities of the platform itself. 
 
Think about that. We’ve had some tricky video assignments, for example, which we needed to dole out to qualified editors. The requirements for success were nuanced. Know the best way to communicate this to the editor? How about a phone call? Or better yet, Zoom? 
 
Nope. Not allowed by Upwork. Or Fiverr. (To the point where they’ll banish these workers from their platforms if they’re caught engaging in such egregious violations of their terms and conditions. The platforms are effectively dangling their livelihoods on a string.) 
 
So what do we do? How do we surmount these challenges? Is it possible to make lemonade from such tainted fruit? 
 
The pen is mightier than the restraint
 
There’s really only one tool at your disposal if you’re looking to get great work out of these gig-economy vendors. And that’s the written word.
 
Imagine that rousing speech and directions you’d planned (or hoped) to give that vendor in person. Write it down. Verbatim. It’s your only/best choice. 
 
Sure, you can, and should, list all the mandatories in the project (“The logo must stay on screen for at least four seconds,” etc.). But you need to put the “carrots” in there, too. We’ve ended some lengthy directions with exhortations such as, “If this one comes out great, there will be others in this series. So impress us!” You’re not some HAL-like computer spitting out commands. You’re a person, doing your best to connect to that vendor on the other side of the gig-platform wall. Be nice. Make friends. 
 
And don’t be surprised if the street isn’t exactly two-way. You may spend, say, an hour writing up an incredible input package. And you may get in return something as succinct as “ok got it thx.” 
 
Don’t be offended. Just roll with it. You don’t need, say, that graphic artist to spend an hour or two on a beautifully written reply; rather, you want them to devote their time to making beautiful graphics, following your instructions in both letter and spirit. 
 
Need help getting the best out of a hybrid team like this? Contact us. We do this all the time, and would be delighted to help you, too! 

​The competition for talent epitomizes supply-and-demand. We’re not recruiters here at Copel Communications—but we have helped numerous clients of ours to improve the “Careers” page on their websites. That’s our contribution to this challenge. 
 
In this article, we’d like to share some tricks and tips which you can use to make your own site’s “Careers” page more enticing for the people you want to attract. 
 
First things first
 
Did you notice the last six words of the previous sentence? They’re crucial: “The people you want to attract.” Before you go changing layouts, or writing copy, or producing videos, think about who the careers page is for.
 
That might sound like a ridiculously simple question. It’s for the people looking for jobs here, duh!
 
But it’s not that simple. Not at all. 
 
Let’s plant a few seeds in your head: 
 
Who are the job-seekers you want to attract? Naturally, the answer to this question will vary with the open positions you’re posting. And while it’s great to be as focused as possible, the wide range of jobs you may offer generally forces you to, well, generalize. 
 
That said, there are some commonalities, given your vertical. Think of it this way: The U.S. Army is always looking for people. But they’re not just soldiers or privates. There are technical jobs, there are leadership roles, there are logistics jobs, finance jobs, you name it. 
 
But if you visit the Army’s website, there’s a distinct commonality to the look and feel of the messaging. That’s because they’ve identified the common traits of people who would be considering jobs in the military: These are people who, for example, value structure. Discipline. Strength. Professionalism. Patriotism. 
 
Once you know those “target audience” attributes for your business, you can get a much clearer picture of what your “Careers” page will need. 
 
Where else are they looking? A job-seeker isn’t just looking at your site. That’s a given. So where else are they looking? For those potential Army recruits, it’s likely... the Navy. Or the Marines. Similarly, you need to look at the “Careers” pages of your competitors and take some notes. The task here isn’t to copy them, but rather to beat them! Now that you know your target audience well, it will be easy to spot the gaps, to detect the tone-deaf messaging, which invariably hinders the competition. 
 
Who else might look at this page? This is the question you likely never even considered when creating your site’s “Careers” page. Who, besides job-hunters, would ever look at this page? And why would you ever care? 
 
The answer might surprise you. It’s quite possibly prospects for your business itself. Any savvy shopper will want to learn more about you than just the goods and services you offer. This is why your “Team” page and its bios are so important (we have a nice article to help you with that challenge). And it’s why the “outside look” at your “Careers” page is important: 
 
A good prospect will want to know how you treat your people. Because that’s a reflection on your business generally—and how you treat other people, such as clients, specifically. 
 
So while you may want to convey something like “We’re a no-nonsense organization who pride ourselves on getting things done” to job-seekers, that’s 1) not too exciting for them, and 2) hardly exciting for a prospective client who wants to see the passion and humanity behind the hard work and execution. 
 
Sell, sell, sell
 
Now that you’ve answered the three questions above, you can begin to better populate your “Careers” page. 
 
To wit: What you’re doing here is basically the intro. That is, all the stuff that comes above the specific job postings. 
 
So you want to show off here. Talk about what makes the company such an amazing place to work—better than any other place to work. Are the assignments challenging? Have you automated away the tedious busy-work? How’s the workplace atmosphere? The perks? The work/life balance? What cool things to see and do are nearby? 
 
You’re looking for “evergreen” content here—that is, stuff you don’t need to update periodically. 
 
Testimonials, from both management and line-level employees, can be killer here. 
 
Lights, camera, action
 
Sure, you’ll have intro text about the “Careers” at your business. But this is one area where video really shines. We’ve made “Careers at [Company]” videos for numerous clients, and they come across like a cross between a fun movie trailer and an ad for an adventure vacation. 
 
Which leads to a hidden benefit of the “Careers” page video: They reinforce that good feeling among the existing workforce. Your people will watch it and think, “That’s right! I’d forgotten about that perk!” or “Hey, there’s Lexi from Accounting!” and get a renewed appreciation for the great gig they’re lucky to have. 
 
We can’t claim that a “Careers” page video will solve all your talent-retention issues. But it makes a little dent. 
 
Need help with your company’s “Careers” page? Contact us. We’d be happy to help. 

​It happens every summer. Work slows down. People take vacations. If you’re still in a business-building mindset, it can be, well, a little maddening. 
 
In this article, we’ll review some things you can do to be productive when others aren’t. To prep your business for the upcoming season of busy-ness. 
 
This article might not be for you. In that regard, it’s probably self-selecting: If you’re reading this, you’re still plugging at it. If you’re on vacation right now, this one will sail right past you. 
 
Mind you, we’re not judging here. You can fall into either camp; we don’t care. But between the summer preppers and the summer tanners, this article is aimed at the former. 
 
Down-time is your time
 
Think back to the busiest part of this year so far. When you had so much work you’d wake up wondering how you’d get through that day. 
 
Now, on that day, think of all the things that you didn’t do. That you couldn’t do. 
 
Why not? 
 
You were too busy. 
 
Pretty simple. 
 
So now is the time to tackle all of those things you’d put off amid the rush of peak season. This is the time for all you cobblers out there to make your kids’ shoes. 
 
This is also a very good time to be selfish, in a biz-dev sort of way. Review what you’ve got, what you’re presenting to the world. 
 
Go through your website. Page by page. Remember all those little niggling details you’d intended to fix and/or update? Now’s the time. 
 
Ditto for your firm’s presentation deck(s). Weed out the outdated stuff. Make mentions of new, recent wins. 
 
For that matter, this is the best possible time to write new client success stories, a.k.a. case studies. (Need help with those? Contact us. We do tons of ‘em.) 
 
Pull together all the client-facing materials from those engagements. Use them to jog your memory. Steal from them, liberally, anonymizing as you go, to create all-new world-facing evergreen material. 
 
And what about your blogs? Are they looking sorely out of date on your site? Now’s the time to curl up with a nice cup of coffee or tea, and knock out a bunch of them so that you have a good backlog of evergreen material to push out on schedule. 
 
(Honestly: Do you think we wrote this July blog in July? Here at Copel Communications, we practice what we preach!) 
 
Speaking of blogs, you have a fully-populated editorial calendar for them, right? 
 
Well, if not, now’s the time to brainstorm your quarterly/monthly/weekly/whatever topics. (We have a good article to help you with that.) 
 
Get into production
 
Blogs—which force people to (ugh) read—are just one way to push out your business. Some of the other ways are surprisingly interlinked:

• If you read that blog, aloud, into a microphone, voilà: It’s a podcast. 

 

• If you fire up your webcam at the same time, voilà: It’s a social video. 

 
And you can push them out just as diligently, using the exact same editorial calendar you’d created for the blogs. 
 
Of course, you can delegate as much of this responsibility and production as your comfort-zone dictates: The writing. The voiceover. The video production. The on-camera talent. And so on. 
 
There are other relatively self-indulgent things you can do during summer down-time, too. Take a good look at your office and your stuff. Is that desk chair begging for replacement? Could the walls use a new coat of paint? Good luck attempting any of those tasks during the busy season. 
 
If you can’t beat ‘em...
 
And of course, there’s one other thing you can do during down-time: 
 
Relax.
 
If you’ve accomplished even half of the things we’d listed above, you deserve a well-earned pat on the back and a nap. Heck, everyone else is taking time off. Things will get busy enough, soon enough. So enjoy the down-time. If you combine that with the productivity tips above, you’ll have the best of both worlds. 
 
And need help with any of those things? Contact us. We’d be happy to pitch in. 

​Y’know, it’s funny. A voiceover is truly an old-school skill: it dates back to the birth of radio about 100 years ago. And radio itself, while still around, isn’t the front-and-center medium it once was. 
 
But what about voiceovers? Have they suffered the same fate?
 
Au contraire.
 
They’ve not only survived. They’ve flourished. They’ve exploded. The internet—specifically things like B2B and B2C videos on YouTube and Vimeo, cross-posted to platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook—have made them ubiquitous. Essential. 
 
And the way they’re done has changed, too. 
 
But we’ll get into that in a minute. The point of this article is to help you get more out of each voiceover you buy, so that your target audience buys more stuff from you. Basic premise, but packed with nuances. 
 
The new reality
 
As we’d noted above, online videos are everywhere. And pretty much all of them have a voiceover—if not for the entire thing, then definitely portions of it. Even if (and this is common) it’s a little video that will scroll by, with the sound off, and big “closed captions” rolling past, Karaoke-style, you’ll still have that voiceover track, which you can hear, the instant you click the “un-mute” icon. 
 
Voiceovers are important. Sure, they tell the story. They explain what’s going on. But, done right, they do much more than that. In a subtle way, they represent, and sell, your brand. 
 
Is that voice authoritative? Seductive? Approachable? Intelligent? Likable?
 
Or what if it’s the opposite? There’s a lot at stake here. Which leads to casting. Which leads to the new modality of simply producing voiceovers. 
 
The new modality
 
Here at Copel Communications, we’ve been directing (and of course writing) voiceovers for decades. Back in the day, we’d do them at sound studios and/or radio stations, and everything was in person. We’d show up. The voiceover artist would show up. The engineer would show up. We’d bring the script, printed on paper, in triplicate, so each party could have a copy. And then we’d sit in the control room while the V.O. artist sat, on the other side of the soundproof glass, in the booth.  
 
We could see each other. (Although we could only hear each other via headphones and microphones.) And seeing is a huge asset when recording a V.O. As the producer, we could see how the artist was performing. They could see our reactions: good, bad, and indifferent. 
 
And there was instant feedback. After a take, we’d rate and review it. We might request a quick punch-in fix. And we could get everyone out of the studio pretty quickly, most of the time, with a great product in-hand. 
 
Fast-forward to the 21st century. No one works like that anymore... at least for the scope and budget of projects such as those we’re discussing here. For the business videos you’re producing, you’ll be posting them online—and you’ll be casting and producing them online, too.
 
The downside is you lose the eye-contact and the immediacy. But pretty much everything else is better: 

• You have infinitely more talent to choose from. 

 

• You can schedule sessions easier, and often get faster turnaround. 

 

• Prices have absolutely plummeted. 

 
About that last point. Decades ago, we’d pay about $150 for a voiceover session in a studio. Today, we’re getting the same product (actually a better product, since it’s digital and not analog) for about a third of that. And that’s after decades of inflation, so the real cost was higher then... or less, now, depending on how you look at it. 
 
There are lots of places to find V.O. talent. There’s Upwork. We’ve had good results with Fiverr.
 
Which gets back to that first bullet: “Infinitely more talent.” We recently wanted a Morgan Freeman-style voice, and searched on “Morgan Freeman-style voice,” and found lots of them. And many of them were quite good! Just like that! It was a real gig-economy moment: This obscure Morgan Freeman sound-alike was just sitting there, when, bang!, he got work from us. Everyone was happy. 
 
Direct without directing
 
We won’t get into the intricacies of casting here; that goes beyond the scope of this article. So we’ll assume you’ve found the talent that you like and need. 
 
But they might be halfway across the country... or the world. (We use lots of British voices, for example.) So how do you direct them if you can’t be in the control room while they’re in the booth? 
 
The answer is the script. That might sound like a no-brainer, but it’s how you craft the script that matters. 
 
Sure, you’ve got your “V.O.” in the “Audio” column of the script. (The other column is “Video.”) But you need to help that announcer along. Consider this V.O. passage (which we’re making up) for a corporate video aimed at banking executives: 

• “When it comes to SOX and the OCC, you may need to issue adverse action letters to clients.” 

 
That’s tricky! There are a few ways a V.O. artist could read this... but only one that you want. 
 
Let’s make it a little more artist-friendly: 

• “When it comes to SOX [“socks”] and the OCC [“O-C-C”], you may need to issue adverse-action letters to clients.” 

 
“Brackets” signify “directions to the artist.” Pretty obvious. As fixed, above, you’ll now know that your artist won’t say “S-O-X” or “Ock”, which wouldn’t help you. 
 
Also note the addition of that hugely important hyphen. “Issue adverse action letters” became “Issue adverse-action letters.” So “adverse-action” will get read [“red,” not “reed,” get it?] as if it were just one word (technically a compound adjective), and just guide that artist along. 
 
Help them with things like numbers, too. Don’t write “1,600.” Choose what you want: either “one-thousand six-hundred” or “16-hundred.” Make it clear. 
 
Here’s another trick: Toss some intriguing direction, for the artist, on the overall character and tonality, at the top of the script. Make it challenging and fun for them; they’ll love you for it... and deliver a better read. We recently penned a script which included a voice for a robot character who was “nerdy yet likeable” with a touch of “efficient British butler” to him. We got a dynamite read out of our artist for that one. 
 
We work on this kind of stuff all the time (heck, we even served as preliminary judge for the Clio Awards for “U.S. Radio”). Need help? We’d love to come to the rescue. Contact us today.