Blue Wave Voiceover

How Will the Election be Affected by Coronavirus

March 13, 2020 by Blue Wave Voiceover

Political Messaging During a Pandemic

All across the country, large cities and small communities are taking the advice of government officials and the CDC to restrict large gatherings to try to stem the spread of the Coronavirus. As more and more towns follow suit, the question of how this will affect the 2020 election cycle — and workers, from public servants right on through the gig economy — is ever prevalent. Of course, we are in the early days of these bans, but we don’t know how drastic the effects will be in the long run for political campaigns or how the election will be affected by Coronavirus. If rallies, events, and canvassing are not possible, it is important to consider the problems that might arise and how we can tackle them head-on so information can reach voters.

No doubt campaigns for elections all over the country are putting their thinking caps on to figure out a way to get important messages about their candidates and causes out to those who need to hear them. With restrictions on movement and quarantining, many voters will be getting to know their candidates through political commercials and radio spots and robocalling. This means there will be a greater demand for voiceovers — and in particular, freelance home studio voiceover talent.

How the Election will be Affected by Coronavirus and Political Voice Talents with Home Studios

Voiceover artists live every day in a fast-paced and quick-turnaround industry: we might have to provide a demo for an audition, book a job, and be required to send in the final, edited recording all in the same day. Because of this, most voiceover talents have their own broadcast-quality home studios. With soundproof booths, high-end microphones, soundboards, and the best audio software to produce top-quality audio, they are streamlined, self-sufficient studios, able to get jobs done quickly and effectively. Better yet, they don’t need to come into contact with anyone outside of their own home, making the CDC-recommended precautions easy to fulfill.

This is all to say that the show must go on — indeed, will go on — and if spreading political messages has to go fully digital, the voiceover talents at Blue Wave Voiceover are ready. Each member of the collective at Blue Wave Voiceover is able to produce high-quality voiceover recordings for political commercials with a fast turnaround time, because everyone in the Collective has a professional home studio, is flexible and understands the needs of ad agencies and producers and their tight deadlines.

How Voiceover Can Help with COVID-19 Preparation

As companies from every industry are trying to advise employees and consumers on new safety regulations and new policies of operation, they will need to send out videos, phone messages, commercials and all kinds of messaging that feature voiceover. Blue Wave Voiceover has diverse, experienced, and bilingual voiceover talent with home studios, who are all well versed in medical and scientific terminology.

It is times like these, where we are looking at policies with a close and critical eye, that campaigns have the opportunity to prosper. It might be that politicians and causes will have to change the way they reach their voters, but technologies and social media are on our side. With clear messaging and an expansive outreach, we can get a candidate’s ideas out and within the voter’s reach. Through quickly produced, yet exceptional quality voiceover, Blue Wave Voiceover is dedicated to showcasing the voices of every voter in an effort to bring forth a Blue Wave in November. Our voice talent of all ages, races, genders and sexual orientations — voices that look and sound like America today — are all prepared to work even harder to elevate the voices of reason.

Gun Control – Moms Demand Action: Grassroots Groups Fighting to End of Gun Violence in America

February 20, 2020 by Blue Wave Voiceover

It has been seven years since the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut where 20 children and 6 educators were killed, renewing calls for stricter gun control. Since December 14th, 2012, there have been 195 shootings on school grounds in America, averaging about one per week. The Sandy Hook shooting has been a turning point where moms demand action and everyday Americans have banned together to fight for a common cause.

The Calling – Moms Demand Action

There have been many people who have felt a call to action against gun violence in America. One of those people is Newtown resident Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, who started a Facebook group the day after the tragedy, that posed the question, “How can everyone play a part to reduce gun violence in America?”

The group has since grown into a grassroots organization that is part of Everytown for Gun Safety, another organization that was also founded with the goal to end gun violence in communities all over the country. Everytown and Moms Demand Action now have chapters in every state and Washington, D.C., and nearly six million supporters. The group has pushed back on the gun lobby and has helped bring forth victories in state legislatures nationwide.

Small Change is Still Change

Both groups are founded on the notion that small changes in our communities are the first steps towards sweeping change nationwide. Most recent victories include the Richmond City Council, which passed an ordinance to report lost and stolen firearms, the Tacoma City Council which passed a tax on ammunition and firearms in order to promote public safety programs, and the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, which approved an ordinance that requires gun sellers to report failed background checks to law enforcement. Many volunteers from Everytown and Moms Demand Action have formally joined the political arena by winning seats in local offices all around the country. They’ve also been successful at creating content to share on social media sites – finding ways to reach citizens and voters where they are at beyond traditional political advertising. Everytown has produced short videos and spots with powerful voiceover layered over images of marches, rallies and family gatherings.

Gun violence statistics in the US have shown a rise in gun-related injuries. According to the CDC there were 39,773 gun deaths in 2017 alone, the highest on record. Each day 100 Americans die from gun violence. Each month 52 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner.

Movement Has Been Slow

In the past 20 years there has been a standstill in federal funding to research the effects and causes of gun violence. In 1996 congress passed the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Bill, known as The Dickey Amendment, in which “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”

Now the House has approved a bill that will allocate $25 million to the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be used for gun violence research. The bill will need to be approved by the Senate and signed by the president, but these new funds could help us understand what causes gun violence and how we can prevent it. The push for these changes in the legislature would not have been possible had it not been for the grassroots organizing of everyday citizens.

Sources:

https://everytown.org/who-we-are/

https://momsdemandaction.org/privacy-policy/#Interest-Based-Ads

https://lawcenter.giffords.org/facts/gun-violence-statistics/

https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2013/02/gun-violence

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/17/politics/gun-research-congress-spending-bill-cdc-trnd/index.html

If you’re advocating for common sense gun control, we’re here to help any way we can. Contact us anytime — we’re in the fight with you and will be proud to share our voice talents with your mission.

Debbie Irwin is a co-founder and talent at Blue Wave Voiceover. Find her at her Blue Wave profile, or hear plenty more at DebbieIrwin.com.

The Shifting Electoral Map: This Isn’t Your Parents’ Red State

February 17, 2020 by Blue Wave Voiceover

Demographics are Changing, and the Voting Patterns

The 2016 election brought a shock to the shifting electoral map. States that were previously thought to be part of the “Blue Wall” were no longer the safe havens they were once thought to be. But some states, though impervious to Democratic advances, have also begun shifting, creating new challenges for candidates in these changing districts to reach potential voters. Especially with shifts in the media ecosystem making it harder for political advertising voices to cut through.

Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were all part of what had previously been considered firmly Democratic states, ensuring a Democratic presidential candidate a considerable number of electoral votes, with Ohio being the Rust Belt state that was often considered a swing state and a huge focus for political advertising dollars. But 2016 upended those preconceptions, with all 4 states failing to go Democratic, albeit by slim margins in the former “Blue Wall” states.

Introducing: Purple States

However, Democratic fortunes in formerly unassailable states like Virginia and Arizona are raising hopes of activists there. Arizona is trending toward a much more purple state, with victories both on the state and local level by Democrats, including Senator Kyrsten Sinema, 5 of Arizona’s 9 U.S. House seats, and the Secretary of State. The party remains in the minority statewide however, holding only 42 of 90 State Senate and House seats, and lost the governor’s race in 2016 by 15 percentage points.

Virginia is in the process of becoming a fully blue state, with all major statewide seats, both Senators, and the majority of both houses (by the slimmest of margins) held by Democrats. Growth in the metropolitan areas around Washington D.C., bolstered by influxes of northern transplants have fueled this change. Residents of these states can expect to see a huge surge in Democratic political spots hitting their airwaves and streaming platforms.

Other southern states like North Carolina have experienced similar changes. It became a firmly purple state in 2008, when Barack Obama won the state, and in 2012 when he lost it by a very slim margin. Growth in Charlotte and the Triangle area has fueled the balance, though it may be some time, if ever, before the state consistently votes Democratic.

They Do Say Things Are Bigger In Texas

The biggest prize is still out there: the purple-trending state of Texas. The Lone Star State has been solidly red for decades, but some cracks have started to appear in the expected areas: high growth urban areas like Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston, all fueled by the same migration patterns that have brought northern transplants to other Southern states. Democrats have pushed to move the state into their column for years, and are hoping to see this shift happen in the next 20 years. Given the number of electoral votes at stake, residents of Texas can expect to hear political voiceover in their living room right up until Election Day 2020.

For political voice actors supporting and voicing for progressive and liberal causes, ample opportunity is available, as these areas are and will continue to be flooded with advertising in this high-stakes electoral season. These states are growing more diverse; in Virginia, 3 in 4 new residents are people of color since 2000. But growth in diversity is not limited to the South: U.S. News and World Report states that Colorado Springs, CO and Henderson, NV have some of the fastest growing diversity rates in the country.

And as advertisers and candidates look to reach out to this growing, diverse population, finding the right voices to reach all segments of these areas — with voice actors who look and sound like the people moving into and living in these regions — will be the key to reaching voters for decades to come.

George Washington III is an 18 year veteran of the voice over industry based in Charlotte, NC. His voice has supported many national and local brands in television and radio, on the web, and on Internet radio like Spotify and Pandora. He has called Charlotte home for 22 years. You can find samples of his work at voevolution.com.

“Us Kids” — A New Documentary, Directed by Kim A. Snyder

February 13, 2020 by Blue Wave Voiceover

After the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 students and teachers on February 14, 2018, survivors of the tragedy mourned, then gathered and organized a movement of activism. Us Kids, directed by Kim A. Snyder, follows the Parkland students as they move across the country rallying for common-sense gun laws and the end of school shootings. The film produced by Impact Partners will be a part of the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. Gun control remains a central issue in the overall Democratic platform and candidates, campaigns and organizations alike continue to look for ways to get the message out in their political spots.

Not Her First Rodeo

This isn’t Snyder’s first documentary film about school shootings. Her film, Newtown, about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016 before being presented at festivals worldwide and on PBS’s Independent Lens and Netflix. It went on to win a Peabody Award. Her short, Lessons From a School Shooting: Notes From Dunblane, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018. The short won the DocDispatch Award at the 2018 Sheffield DocFest, and a Grierson Award nomination. It is now available to stream on Netflix in 196 countries.

Gun control and gun safety would appear to be a cause close to Kim A. Snyder’s heart. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter Snyder said of her upcoming film, Us Kids, “We’re very inspired right now with the youth movement. We’ve been doing a new project based in Parkland with some of the students here, so our body of work is really a trajectory of five years — probably more — of really trying to put a narrative on this sort of, hopefully, tipping point in our country that addresses gun violence.”

The Beginning of A Movement

After the shooting, survivors started March for Our Lives, a movement of activism that aims to “harness the power of young people across the country to fight for sensible gun violence prevention policies that save lives,” according to the website. Activists have led marches around the country to bring attention to the epidemic and to support legislation for tighter gun laws.

According to CNN, there have been 31 mass shootings at K-12 schools since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Florida. There have been 142 mass shootings since Newtown. 100 Americans are killed every day as a result of gun violence. It is through activism and in survivors telling their stories that we can hope to bring about positive change.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/parkland-doc-works-newtown-director-kim-a-snyder-tribeca-film-festival-2018-1106925

https://marchforourlives.com/mission-story/

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/14/us/school-shootings-since-parkland-trnd/index.html

A voice talent and co-founder of Blue Wave Voiceover, Debbie Irwin can also be found at DebbieIrwin.com.

Stacy Abrams’ Fight Against Voter Suppression

February 12, 2020 by Blue Wave Voiceover

Legal attempts at voter suppression are nothing new, and thousands of voters have been purged from the voter rolls in two key 2020 election states; Georgia and Wisconsin. Judge Paul Malloy in Wisconsin ordered the removal of 234,000 names from the state’s voter rolls claiming an attempt to remove inactive voters, or ones that have not responded to address confirmations from election officials. To put it into perspective, that is roughly 7 percent of the electorate in the state. Donald Trump won Wisconsin in the 2016 presidential election by just 23,000 votes. According to the Wisconsin Election Commission, the removal of these voters was not planned to happen until 2021, but in response to a lawsuit from a conservative group, Judge Paul Malloy had ordered that the voters be removed 30 days after they fail to respond to election officials. In battleground states, Democrats and progressives cannot afford to lose votes through forced partisan bureaucracy.

An Ordered Purge

Four days after the judge’s ruling, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ordered the removal of 309,000 names from the state’s voter rolls. That makes up about 4 percent of the electorate. In the state’s gubernatorial race between Stacy Abrams and Brian Kemp in 2018, Stacy Abrams failed to qualify for the runoff by 21,000 votes. The purge will remove the names of at least 100,000 who have chosen not to vote in previous elections. This is happening shortly before the state’s primary election. And, unfortunately – there isn’t enough political advertising or political voiceovers in the world to cut through the noise if people simply aren’t permitted to cast their votes.

The fear from voter advocates is that this purge is meant to affect those who are younger, and poor or disenfranchised people of color who move often and who predominantly lean democratic. The “use it or lose it” mentality will revoke Georgian residents’ right to vote simply because some couldn’t or chose not to vote in past elections. This all stems back to an Ohio Supreme Court ruling in 2018, split 5-4 along partisan lines, that allows Ohio election officials to remove names from the voter rolls they deem outdated, and requires those voters to re-register.

What It Means for the 2020 Election Season

As we get closer to the 2020 presidential election it is expected that we see even more types of voter suppression beyond closed polling stations, long lines at the polls, broken polling booths, and new identification laws. The challenge here is that even if you are able to get your political spots in front of the voters you need, they may not be able to cast their vote. This is why Stacy Abrams has started her own advocacy group called Fair Fight, in an effort to put voter advocates on the ground in 20 swing states to help combat efforts to suppress an American’s right to vote. The group has created programs with the aim to educate voters about their rights, advocating for election reform and assisting in voter registration.

So far, Fair Fight has assisted in filing lawsuits against the Georgia voter purge and has proposed a fine of $300,000 for the state’s failure to turn over paper ballots for recounts.

With Fair Fight, Stacy Abrams is working hard to ensure that all voters have the chance to cast a vote and have their voices heard in the upcoming general election. She has started a campaign to raise enough money so Fair Fight representatives can assist voters in fighting suppression in all 20 battleground states. As of now the group has raised nearly 15 million dollars towards this goal. More information can be found on the group’s website, https://fairfight.com/.

Sources:

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/474754-stacey-abrams-group-files-emergency-motion-to-stop-georgia-voting

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/12/gop-led-voter-purges-in-wisconsin-and-georgia-could-tip-2020-elections/

https://fairfight.com/latest-news/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/11/17448742/ohio-voter-purge-supreme-court-ruling

Debbie Irwin is a Blue Wave voice talent and co-founder. To hear more of her work, visit DebbieIrwin.com.

The Generational Divide of Social Media

January 18, 2020 by Blue Wave Voiceover

Spoiler Alert: Gen Z isn’t hanging out on Facebook with your Aunt Diane and her six cats.

Blue Wave Voiceover Social Media Images on iPhone — So many chat apps, so little time.

Kids these days, amirite? Every day there’s another social media platform. Another app. Another place to find content. Create content. Put content. You name it – it’s happening in the digital ecosystem. But what’s interesting is that the generational divide of social media is beginning to appear across the different content platforms. And perhaps the mighty titans that seemingly built Silicon Valley into the buzzword it is today are beginning to show some cracks in their foundations. Some signs of aging. Does Olay have a cream for that, too?

Competing for Attention

Advertisers are competing for eyeballs. (And earballs? If that’s a thing? Ok, maybe we’ll just stick with eyes and ears.) And they’re competing every second of every day. And in 2020, that goes doubly for political campaigns and advertisers that have a very short runway to work with in launching their message. Whether that’s with live action commercials with actors, national voiceover talents and a full production budget or quick and dirty animated videos with freelance VO artists under an ultra low budget. In order to gain market share, attention, visibility and more – answer this first question: where are those eyes and ears that everyone is so desperately trying to reach? The answer isn’t simple because we’re not all hanging out in the same place.

A Media for Each in the Generational Divide

It used to be easy to reach people on a Thursday night with a powerful brand campaign, product launch, candidate ad, or a water-cooler conversation- funny spot. (Paging, Geico!) When you only had a handful of television stations to choose from, and the internet was just homemade Geocities fan pages dedicated to Tickle Me Elmo and Michael Jordan. But now, a primetime television show on network TV might only pull in a few million viewers, while a viral cat video on YouTube could rack up more than 100 million views.

So – which generations are hanging out where? Gen Z and Millennials can be found on fledgling video networks TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram as their primary social media platforms. And they use and access multiple platforms per day. They’re also huge consumers of video content on YouTube and were at the forefront of the cord-cutting movement – leaving cable in the dust for platforms like Hulu, Pluto, YouTube TV, Sling, and the new Disney+.

Is Facebook Losing Steam?

According to a social media study published on TheManifest.com, Facebook’s popularity is steeply declining with Gen Z, with only 36% surveyed using the platform regularly. A huge difference compared to surveyed Baby Boomers – 96% and Gen Xers – 90% who reported using Facebook regularly.

And when it comes to political advertising buys, you have the added difficulty of some platforms drawing lines in the sand. We’ve recently seen Google, Twitter, and Spotify say that they don’t want to play in the political commercials game. Or at least, they’re getting very picky about it. Getting content in front of the right people on the right platforms is not only crucial, but it’s also getting harder by the day.

Key Considerations in the Generational Divide of Social Media

So, before making your ad buy decisions – consider some key questions:

Who are you targeting – what are the age ranges/generations of your primary targets?
What social media platforms are you more likely to find your targets on? Do those platforms allow political advertising messages?
What type of advertising (video, audio) is most effective on your target platforms?

Blue Wave Voiceover Elderly people on swing — It’s OK boomers – we all love you. Just check Snopes next time before you post that chain letter on Facebook.

This can help ensure your ad dollars go further and you reach the buyers – and voters – that you most want to communicate with and influence.

Maria Pendolino is the powerhouse talent behind Voice By Maria and is the founder of MillennialVoiceover.com, a website dedicated to help brands and companies “Speak Millennial.” She’s a nationally repped voice talent that regularly works on television, radio and social media advertising campaigns. If you’re looking to hire a freelance female voiceover talent, you can check out her portfolio of work at www.voicebymaria.com. Maria is also proud to be the Voiceover Talent Coordinator for Blue Wave Voiceover. She can be reached via email at casting@bluewavevoiceover.com.