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Tough question, how do you know when it's time to update your voiceover demo? There are a few things that you can do to check.
How do you know when it's time to update your demo?
So how do you know when it's time to update your demo? Well, I've got a couple of tasks for you. The first thing that I want you to do is to listen to your demo very carefully and write down every single spot that's in your demo. Tell me if it's in a particular industry, if there's any brand names associated with it, what genre is it in; if you're talking about a commercial, um, a corporate, e-learning, explainer -- whatever it is, I want you to really note the genre and then go and listen to voiceover in that genre.
So, if you have a commercial demo and you wanna know if it's time to update that demo, I want you to go and listen to commercials that are current. And you can do a lot of that by Googling, um, you know, current commercials. Or you can go to iSpot TV, which is a great spot. You can go to a company's website and see if they have any, uh -- or YouTube channel and see if they have any commercials listed on there. It's very easy to search for those. And find out if, first of all, what date were they published, and find out if your spots on your demo are current and relevant and talking about a product that exists or maybe the product no longer exists. That's a big, that's a big one. Uh, you don't necessarily wanna be talking about a product on your demo that doesn't exist anymore or a service that doesn't exist anymore, things that are outdated. If you have any dates in the spots on your demo, you might wanna, that's kind of a red flag to, you know, find out if it's 1990, you may want to refresh that demo.
If you're listening to your e-learning demo, I want you to see if you're talking about topics that are current and trending, um, if the style and the performance of your e-learning demo is up to snuff -- and that really goes for any genre. Um, you know, today's 90% of today's style is authentic, believable. I don't wanna say the word conversational, but really it's something that's very engaging, and that includes your e-learning demo and any narration demos that you have. Whatever you used to think about as traditional, let's say, narration -- really listen and make sure that this traditional narration sound is really an engaging storytelling sound.
So you can be a little bit outdated in your style as well. And if you have anything on your commercial demo that might be a little too announcery or promo sounding, you might wanna replace one or two of those spots with something that's very authentic and very genuine sounding. It's not just about the sound or the performance of you; it's also the content that you're speaking about. If you have an explainer demo, explainers have actually changed over the years. They used to be very one note. They used to be very much a, "here's the problem, meet Joe. You know, Joe's got a problem and now introducing the solution." They've actually evolved and become more mature over the years. So go and listen. Uh, again, search YouTube channels, search Vimeo channels, and listen to current spots in that genre.
Thanks for reading!
Keep on rocking your business like a #VOBOSS
About Anne Ganguzza
Recipient of multiple Voice Arts Awards for Outstanding Narration Demo - Anne Ganguzza is California-based Voice Over Coach and award-winning Director & Producer specializing in target-marketed voiceover Demo Production. Anne's production team creates SOVAS-nominated demos across several genres, including Commercial, Corporate Narration, and eLearning, and her VO BOSS podcast is the winner of SOVAS Outstanding Podcast in 2022.