Presented by J. Michael Collins at the 2024 Euro VO Retreat in Barcelona, Spain

In political advertising, there has been a significant increase in spending, with a growing importance of regional targeting and careful marketing to avoid offending potential clients. Inclusivity is increasing in political voiceover as well, where non-white voices have a major advantage when seeking this work.

JMC also discussed the intricacies of political voiceover work, emphasizing the importance of understanding the volume game and becoming a consistent voice for a particular campaign or cause. Additionally, we covered micro-targeting in political campaigns, with insights on identifying key titles within campaign organizations and leveraging industry standards, SEO strategies, and focusing on your online presence as a pro VO to attract high-paying clients.

No more offseason

In this 2024 cycle, roughly $20 billion has been spent on political ads. And since Trump came on the scene, there’s no longer any offseason for political ads. The amount spent on political ads has increased each year since his election, and there’s no downtime.

“Democrats spend just a little bit more overall, but the Republicans are actually considered more organized in terms of how they spend, how they target and it's a little bit more cohesive, as production is more aligned.

“You also have what we call third parties, so don't sleep on the libertarians, the greens, the communists, the whatever. All the smaller parties spend money too. It's not on par with the big ones, but they're paying the same advertising rates as the big parties are when they're putting their stuff on the air. And they're basically paying the same voiceover rates for the most part. So those are still good targets to go after because they do have work.” - JMC

Political VO sounds more diverse

Everybody can play, no matter how you sound.

“It used to be just booming, middle-aged white voices. Now it's everybody from Gen Z all the way up to older talent, male, female, from every background. VO in political looks more and more like America every single day, and that's continuing to be an ongoing threat.

“There's more micro-targeting or geo-casting where geo-targeting and political than there has ever been before. I've seen instances where the same spot has been run by a campaign. And if it's in a state for instance, they might run that spot in 10 different regions of that state with 10 different voices, because they're targeting different demographics.” - JMC

The only exception to this is super young voices. If you sound like you’re under 20, there's not a lot of work because you have to sound like you’re old enough to vote. JMC stated that the sound of a 25-year-old is the low end of the sound line and still most of political leans more 30-plus. So you don't age in political the way you do in some other genres. And also, announcers are still welcome.

Casting for political VO has become more counterintuitive. JMC gets hired by Democrats, while minority and female talent are getting hired by Republicans. This is because a small percentage of voters could be persuaded to vote and make an impact in tight races. He gave the example of how Ron Desantis won for governor by a small margin of around 50,000 votes, where he was running against a Black candidate. One of the spots promoting him featured a 70-year-old Black woman. This is an example of micro-targeting, and it’s going to become a big thing in political races.

Be strategic when marketing your political demo

If want a political demo, pick a party if you like, or do different demos for different parties. But be careful—you may not want to put them directly on the homepage of your website. JMC said his political demos are only on his Demos webpage, but it’s your choice.

“Don't hit every hot-button issue in such a vitriolic way that you're gonna really piss everybody off. I've had people make demos that are so incendiary that I've been like ‘You even have to be careful marketing to that party.’ Because there are people in the party who are going to disagree with the positions on some issues, so you don’t want to be so extreme.” - JMC

If you'll voice both Democratic and Republican ads, there's even more work out there for you. But even if you'll only do Democratic ads, there is still more work than there is talent to do it.

“The number of voice actors actively chasing political work is maybe 1000 or 1200 that are doing it, where it's falling into some people's laps through production companies or agency connections and they're not necessarily chasing it. How many voice actors have a good political demo? Maybe 250, and I've probably done 75% of them. There’s like four of us who produce political demos.” - JMC

Union and non-union political VO

On the Democratic side, there's more union work than on the Republican side. However, the majority of it is non-union.

“I want to say a lot of it falls under non-signatory, so as long as it winds up being medium scale, you can work through a paymaster. I think it works a little bit like e-learning in that most of it does pay scale or better.” - JMC

Optimize your website SEO for inbound leads

One way to find work in this genre is by contacting political action committees (PACs) for your chosen party. However, SEO can help bring political voice buyers to you. Younger voice buyers especially want to cut out the “middleman” and go directly to the source.

“It's because people under 35 are simply going to Google or even ChatGPT and entering political voiceover demographic, sound, age, etc. I call this the curator revolution. But it's happening in retail commercials, it's happening in narration, even in broadcast narration.

“It's the way a lot of younger buyers are casting these days. They just don't want to go through a middleman. I love my agents. I love all these people—the casting directors, I love the managers, but younger buyers are not going there. They don't want to pay 20% on anything, right? They just want to find us and work with us directly. So SEO, whatever genre you're playing in, make it a priority because it's now it has changed my life.” - JMC **

Working with an SEO writer who can optimize your website together in a way that's going to attract Google to crawl your site regularly, which will index your website high in search. [Shameless plug: I can help you with this!]

“Because there’s so little competition in this genre, you can get onto page one or page two [of search results] on say female, political democratic voiceover. Add your voice characteristics.

“When SEO buyers come in for political they tend to be extremely motivated. They've heard your demo. They like you. They're ready. So I typically double whatever the normal rate would be as my quote and then we'll negotiate down if we have to. You'd be surprised how much you can get from political buyers.” - JMC