Thursday 9 December 2010

Ask me a question

Last week, I launched my new VoiceMonkey web site. Please do check it out at www.voicemonkey.co.uk

As a brand new concept, I asked a number of friends and associates what they thought of the idea. Now it's not like I was pitching to Dragon's Den here, but the general opinion of everyone I spoke with was that it is a good idea and is bound to be very popular.

For those of you who have not yet checked it out (and what's the matter with you anyway) The VoiceMonkey is an opportunity for people to download personalised celebrity impressions to use on their phone, be it for
ringtonesor my personal favourite, voice mail greetings.

You see, when I was a youngster back in the eighties, my parents bought the house an answering machine and it was clearly a vision of the future. Being tape based, it was only a matter of time before comedy messages became available in the shops and these guys did pretty good business with them.

Fast forward some 25 years and it seems that the same product is not yet available for the ubiquitous mobile, which clearly needs to change. Feel free to join the revolution and visit the site. You can also follow it on Twitter and Facebook. See? I really am trying to cover my bases here.

To launch, I took a small promotional stand at a shopping centre in Harlow in Essex for a long weekend of Friday to Sunday. In a word, fail, but not for the reason that the idea isn't any good, because it is, so there.

What was strange was how many people would walk up to or near the stand, ask in a rhetorical, yet out loud manner, "what's Voice Monkey?" and then walk straight off!

I just don't get it. You find yourself curious about something. You vocalise that curiosity and better yet, you are standing opposite someone who can clearly answer your questions but what do you do? You walk away!

I would really like to think that I am not like that. I have a healthy thirst for knowledge and if the opportunity to get my questions answered are there, then I am asking my questions.

So what do you want to know about me? Are you wondering if I can do a particular voice or if I can sing a certain way? Are you wondering if I represent other voice artists? Well stop wondering, pick up the phone and call me. My web site does not feature an FAQ because the beauty of the world of
voice over is that the questions are just about as random as anyone could hope for!

Ultimately, don't be afraid to ask. No one in business has ever been bothered about answering questions. I don't want to suggest that there is no such thing as a stupid question because there is. There are tons of them, but isn't it better to just ask it and get it answered than spending your time simply not knowing?

That last one...was rhetorical.

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