Thursday, September 10, 2009
Declining Commercial Appeal
Backstage: "The economic downturn has affected just about every sector of the national workforce. Commercial and voiceover actors have not been immune. Though many in the industry—from performers to their union representatives—say it's tough to gauge exactly how many people are having a hard time finding commercial and voiceover gigs these days, all agree that things seem slow and that advertising spending is in flux."
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4 comments:
This article was interesting to me because of the insight into the process that actors go through for getting commercial work. I think that the decline of new commercials being produced is unfortunate, because that also means a decline in work for many other people, besides just the voice actors.
Last spring break I attended a MEIM lecture in LA on this exact subject. The greatest concern is the pull of sponsers, especially with television. As a result, obviously, the wheel stopped turning and work slowed down which, of course, cause a whole slew of people to eventually feel the effect: from the producer to earn a buck on a new gig to the actor looking for work. The point they brought up was in order to fight this recession they need to rethink advertising and how it's delivered to the audience. They emphasised product placement and used 30 Rock as an example of the greater success the product placement in the show has over the actual commercials between parts. It's unfortunate, but if this is one of the major factors in the drop in entertainment projects then all the actors can do, besides keep with business as usual, is wait for the producers to figure out how to bring back the sponsers. It's going to be tough, especially in a recession, but not impossible. They just need to be more creative and find new approaches to old methods
Commercial actors are often overlooked when we think about the acting population...but as this article so clearly puts it, this group of people is also hurting from the effects of this recession. Nicole brings up a good point with product placement. Even though the economy will pick up soon enough, that may not be helpful for commercial actors, as advertisers are turning more and more to product placement in tv shows and film rather than in the commercials. This makes sense for them because no one seems to watch commercials anymore, but this will do some serious damage in the acting community.
Wow. I had no idea. I know voice over actors often work in commericals but the fact that there's less advertising work to go around is slightly disturbing. So many industries rely on advertising revenue. Not only television, but most of the internet is add-supported. If companies are advertising less, then I suppose we really are in trouble. Is there a more creative way for them to advertise? I know some people were getting annoyed because advertisers decided to include ads in video games. I've yet to see any data on whether that takes away from other industries, but overall this article is incredibly worrying.
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