Inside a coaching session with Nancy Wolfson

A friend of mine like me, was looking for a coach and decided to do a tele-coahcing session with Nancy Wolfson. As many of you already know, Nancy is one of the major players in the business, and has a great repution. However, her worksop at VOICE 2008, in my opinion, left much to be desired. I was very disappointed.

My freind also had some questions, but decided to go with Nancy anyway. So finally when the session happened, I told her to give me some feedback. Here are some of the things she said.

First, since it would be thier initial sesson, Nancy sent her some "homework-prep " which she said was very helpful. (GO Nancy!)

"My first session with Nancy went well -- it wasn't so much a coaching session as a demo audit. We spent time chatting a bit and then she gave a pretty detailed listen and analysis of my current demo. Total of an hour.

Right away, I did notice is that she has a very keen ear. Before listening to the demo, I shared a bit about myself, and she made observations about my sound, vowels, my regionalisms, and could also tell what my face was doing (my mouth/jaw/tongue) over the phone.

Re the demo...She gave a strong critique, and I was expecting that, however it was constructive. She told me what she liked, didn't like and why. One aspect is local / national market standards. I know that her standard is a national market, so that's the bar that she's holding the demo to. My feeling is that national vo commercials are very nuanced and subtle. My demo was created in a small local market, and I agree with her assessment on the forced, "corny commercial" (my words) feel of my demo. However, that's what local commercials sound like here! She did note that the overall demo is a reflection of the director (who does come from a small market and knew very little about me before doing the demo). Some music or sound layering was dated and obviously small market to her ears. Either too over the top, or did not match my voice style.

On branding, while listening to the demo, she picked out what was my "brand sound." And I was surprised, but based on my interpretation of what national commercials are (subtle), it makes sense. if you listen to my demo, she liked my voice/delivery for 2 spots I did, 1 PSA and one health food commercial. So that's good to get a beginning direction on where my niche could be.

But aside from that, some things that I really understood is how I do need coaching on commercial acting. I have no training in commercial. It's all been intuitive or guessing. Commercial have such a limited amount of text, so each word or phrase really does have a big punch. Or no punch if I totally miss the point of the copy writer putting it there. She asked me questions about the 'call to action' that I am asking of the customer/listener, and how to present that for different goals (do I want the person to think about something or buy something or call someone, etc.)

I think her skills are definitely worth the cost... I was very impressed with her ear and her knowledge and insight about the minutiae of commercial script analysis that she does have. I look forward to tapping that in the next lesson. I do have another session scheduled for November, and in the meantime I'll download her "acting for advertising" mp3s. She sent copy to work on, and so it's good to have 'homework' "

Bravo to Nancy and my friend. It sounds like it was a productive session!