Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, but judiciously.

There are few things more annoying than hearing a fake British accent in a radio commercial. (Imagine how the Brits must feel.) However, we do at least three different British accents that we’re told are downright convincing. Scottish, too (or is it just extreme Northern England?), Brooklyn NY and a few others.

As for characters, there are a few different ways of looking at the art of the character voice. What some call “characters” are simply imitations. Doing Elmo’s voice – and we do Elmo better than the guy who does him right now on Sesame Street – isn’t the same as a character voice. It’s an impersonation. (For the record, we also do great imitations of Snuffy, Ernie, Bert, Kermit, Marge Simpson, Columbo, most Christopher Lloyd characters, Stallone, Marvin the Martian and, when pressed, Big Bird.) We’ve also been around the block enough to know that you can’t simply pretend that Sylvester Stallone is reading your commercial.

When we think “character voice”, we think, “really outgoing NYC cabbie who, like all New Yorkers, knows a guy.” We think, “affable fellow you’d wind up sitting next to at a pub in Manchester”, which is a completely different character voice from, “gentleman you’d be seated in proximity to at an establishment in London.”

No – in fact, we encourage it because frankly, because we’re lazy. Our experience has been that if you’re listening during the recording session, we’ll get to where we need to be faster. You’ll be able to hear things that need tweaking as they’re happening, we’ll be able to ask questions or offer suggestions while we go, and together we’ll get the result we’re looking for without wasting time sending incorrect takes back and forth.

We don’t.

About a minute to write the Beatles’ classic, “Yesterday”. It’s said that Leonard Cohen, though, took five years to write “Hallelujah”.

You get the idea.

Television advertising is its own animal. We’re happy to write the copy that is spoken over the visual elements – in which case, our regular radio rates apply – but creating those visual elements is outside our wheelhouse. (With that said, we know plenty of people who create amazing visual tapestries, then ruin them with lousy copy. The best bet is a combination of the two disciplines.)

We can. And when we get together – virtually or otherwise – for our initial consultation, we’ll give you some examples of search terms where we organically achieved the #1 result on Google.

Two thoughts on this, though:

1. Beware of anyone whose ad says, “We’ll get you the #1 search result on Google.” Especially when they haven’t met you, discussed your project, or listened to what your goals are. Want to have some fun? Call up a company that makes that promise and tell them you want to rank #1 for the term, “insurance”. Then listen to the awkward silence on the other end of the phone.
2. We can write for search engines. We’re really good at it. But we’re even better at writing for humans. You know, people. People who can hear stuff that makes them feel something.

We’re currently preparing an offering for website building. Right now, our plan is to include it as one of the services we provide to new podcasters as part of a launch package. (But yeah, we built it.)