We basically spent the last few months working our little white hineys off to get the site spiffy for Dragons Den. What a hoot it has been. Dragon Gavin Duffy, has a good blog and writes every week about the show. He’s kind of got our number in terms of doing Dragons Den in order to get publicity for the site. We knew that only some people got a feature slot on Dragons Den which is 8 minutes long, while others had to make do with 30 seconds.  So we knew we had to do something that stood out.  I did wear that crazy dress for the publicity.  But… we would’ve loved an investment also. Especially from Sean. We looove him. James loves him because he plays Judo, and I love him because he’s always making inappropriate jokes.

Filming the show  was nerve-wrecking but fun. It was done in January, when all the snow storms were hitting Dublin. The thing that didn’t really come across on the final show was the vibe in the Den. I thought the Dragons were great craic, and they were definitely friendlier and cooler in real life as what they come across on the telly. In the end, after nearly 1.5 hours of questioning we got our offers in. €20k for 50% of the business from Sarah, and €15k for 40% from Sean. The Dragons are shrewd investors. But so are we…. And as my native Saffers would say, nought brew. If I were watching the show and saw somebody else take that same offer, I would be shouting at the telly going “don’t be crazy!! say no say no!!”.

I do love P. She is great. But sometimes she gets us in a whole lot of trouble. Take for example, early one August morning, when she gleefully informed me that we had been entered as contestants on the infamous Dragon’s Den program.

I was not in favour. The Dragon’s are famous for ripping hapless entrepreneurs to pieces in front of a nationwide audience. There was no way I’d be up for that.

However. I do love her - and she is persuasive. Here are a few of the reasons why it would be a good thing to do.

1. Over half a million people watch the show. More importantly  - pretty much all of adland Ireland watches it.  There would never be a better chance to get our talent front and centre of so many eyeballs.
2. Thousands of small business owners watch the show.  They produce tens of thousands of pieces of advertising every year and many of those go on radio or TV - not to mention podcasts, audio-books etc etc.  Going on the box would mean they would know where to come when they needed voice talent for their promotions.
3. It would be a hoot.

I love hoots.  They are great craic.  And its true that we owe it to you guys to get the most profile possible for you.

So this Thursday night we are setting forth onto the airwaves.  Wish us luck and tune in.

Brief videos explaining how to use a web-site or web-app are all the rage. I like it. It’s an engaging way to tell people how to use your service without them having to dig through explanations. Its just a shame that most of these video’s don’t go the extra mile and pay attention to the sound.

It is a bit of a bug bear of mine - but there is nothing worse than watching a grainy vimeo video where I can’t hear what instructions being mouthed by the demonstrator. If they knew how easy it was to get a voicover to mix in decent audio, perhaps more people would do it.

So here is how it works.

1. Find a voice-over for your gig. You can search for Irish, UK and Canadian talent. FYI: the Canadians sound just like yanks so you can hire them if you are targeting that market.
   For a small job like this, you are looking for someone with a home studio. We can help advise on this front.
2. Get a portion of your script together and post it via our online auditions.
3. The results come in pretty quickly, and once you have someone you like, hire them.
4. They’ll send back a mp3 which you can lay over your video. Some of them will be able to mix the video for you also.

And that is it. It won’t cost a bomb but it’ll make the world of difference when it comes to how likely your users are to actually stay and figure out how that website actually works.

There’s a new agency in town, Boys and Girls.  They are fun, we like them.  Here is a wee interview to get to know them better.

So what’s the deal with Boys & Girls?
To put it simply, 4 boys and 2 girls got together. One thing lead to another and next thing we knew we were the proud parents of an agency. A very talented, creative agency at that. We’re so proud.

When did you start and how’s it going for you?
We opened our doors last November and we’ve been delighted with the response so far. We’ve won a number of great accounts and were pitching almost every week.

What’s your background/history?
We’ve each been in advertising for a fair chunk of time (over 85 years when added collectively) and have worked in most of the big agencies in town. Which in turn means we’ve worked on most of the leading brands in the country. That’s a lot of experience concentrated into our new agency.

Starting a new agency in a recession?! Are you a masochist or something?
Yes… I mean no… I mean yes. Apple Strudel!! (What’s the “or something”?)
A lot of people have asked us that question (the ‘setting up’ one, not whether we’re masochists). We think recessions are a good time to set up. For one thing, clients are actively looking for effective and efficient solutions and are willing to listen. For another, you can really keep your operation costs in check. If you can create an efficient business model that succeeds during a recession…well that’s a sure sign of a damn fine model.

If you had to choose - would you rather buy products that were made by child slave labour, or products that are made from illegal ivory poaching?
Hmmm, I know this is going to sound boringly PC, but I worked on a “Stop Child Labour” campaign for Concern a couple of years ago. And elephant’s are my favourite animal. So I’ll go for ‘C’ because an ad told me there is always a ‘C’ option. And ads don’t lie.

Radio advertising is like marmite. You love it or hate it, and normally it’s hate.  What’s your view?

I love radio advertising (I hate marmite). I think radio is a very creative and impactful medium…when it’s used properly…which if we’re honest is seldom. You’ve heard the expression “Radio is the theatre of the mind”. Well most peoples minds’ don’t feature two people repeating a phone number back and forth, and I’m pretty sure glorified infomercials aren’t considered theatre. Advertising works best when you have a simple, singular idea. It has impact if that idea is executed with creativity and daring. It is not a competition to see how many words you can fit in 30seconds. This is as true for radio as it is for any other media.  As a medium, radio is facing a huge number of challenges, from DAB to iTunes. There’s a constant battle to hold on to listeners, so increasing the creative quality of both the programming and the advertising is absolutely essential.

To check out their website, go here.  To see their boardroom table built out of Lego, click below:

To vote please text ANNESLEY B to 51303.   Or click here, select Annesley Bridge Branch, and choose option B, the Irish Humour Foundation.

Hear Esther O’Moore Donohoe on VHI Healthcare’s promo for Grey’s Anatomy, Tuesdays at 9.00pm on RTÉ Two. Stat!

LISTEN TO ESTHER’S VOICE OVER DEMO.

Every year - we pretty much tear down piehole and start again.  Our first attempt looked something like …

We loved it but after a LOT of heated discussion, we upgraded the site.  When I say ‘upgrade’, I mean ‘broke’ the site a lot in the hopes of moving to a new platform would help us make changes more easily.  It took a lot of effort and afterwards we ended up with …

And today  (TADA) we’ve finaly arrived at the Nirvana of websites - until we change it all again next year of course.

Of course there are still problems with the new design.  Its classier. But classier and useful don’t always go together.  What do you think?  Give us your feedback?  We’ll listen - honest

No we really will.  Leave a comment.  Let us know.

Our chief nerd has been nerding his little hiney off over the past few weeks and along with a spanking new look for Piehole, we also now have an exclusive iPhone version. If you’re down with the Apple kidz you can browse our entire collection of Voic overs from the comfort of your director’s chair, anywhere in the world.
To add Piehole to your home screen, open safari and browse to www.piehole.ie (or piehole.ca or piehole.co.uk) and then press the ‘+’ button and select ‘add to home screen’.

Hi - I just wanted to let you know about an Internet drama which I recently worked on called ‘Daily Strife’.It is being shown on the web as part of RTE’s ‘Storyland’ programme. How this works is that they show ‘Daily Strife on the RTE website at www.rte.ie/storyland along with four other films. The public can then vote and whoever gets the least vote doesn’t get to go on to make another episode. It’s all a little bit ‘Big Brother’ but I would really appreciate your support on this as I think that it’s a good strong piece of work and I would really like to work on it again!!! Anyway, to find out more about the film and to view a short trailer, visit http://www.dailystrife.com/ .
It goes live on 29th January. After which you’ll have a week to register your vote. Voting opens 5 feb. As Michael Collins might say, Vote Early and Vote Often! All and any support is much appreciated.

To listen to Jim’s voice over demo click here.