I went to a radio ad recording today with Maryam Mazlan, a Senior Account Executive at Batey Ads. She's a very sweet and pretty 25-year-old Malay girl who taught me a lotta things today. We picked up our client from the Telekom head office in Bangsar and then we went to this studio called Incognito. I met some voice talents there such as Ramona Rahman (a local actress but she's listed under Hollywood Celebrities at www.hollywood.com because in 1993, she starred in a movie called Fifty/Fifty), Jit Murad, and Colin Chong (Harith Iskandar was supposed to be the voice talent but he called at 9 something and said he was sick, so we called Colin to replace Harith).
The radio ad is about Telekom's Home View surveillance system. So when you hear this ad on the radio, just remember that it was done by the Batey Ads ppl... hehehe... it's a very funny ad... Maryam appeared in one of the print ads too, as a "maid"... hahaha... she said that during the casting, they couldn't find anyone at that time to be the "maid" so they told her to do it.
The radio ad is about Telekom's Home View surveillance system. So when you hear this ad on the radio, just remember that it was done by the Batey Ads ppl... hehehe... it's a very funny ad... Maryam appeared in one of the print ads too, as a "maid"... hahaha... she said that during the casting, they couldn't find anyone at that time to be the "maid" so they told her to do it.
Anywayz, at the studio, the talents had to rehearse a few times before the recording. They recorded the VO (Voice Over) and the dialogues separately. Then they added in layers of sound effects in the background to make the ad more lively and interesting. They had to record their lines within a certain time frame because every sec of airtime costs money. Usually radio ads are 30-sec long.
The radio ad was done in English, Malay and Chinese. Ramona, Jit and Colin did the English and the Malay versions. For the Chinese version, a guy named Shaun and another guy (I forgot his name) did the ad in Mandarin and Cantonese. Shaun really looks like Daniel Ding... hahaha... ;P
Btw, if you're looking for voice talents, check out this website: http://www.imaginex.com.my/voice.htm
After the recording, I went back to the agency to discuss the creative req and the job req with one of my mentors, Eric Foo, the Strategic Planning Director. He commented that the briefs I did were generally good but he told me to make a few amendments and resend the files to him by tomorrow. He taught me some new things today like how important it is to probe the clients to talk more about their target audience during the 1st meeting between the AE and the client, because most of the clients might not know how to describe their target audience in detail. The more details they give about the target audience, the easier it is for the Creative team to come up with concepts that speak directly to the consumer. The values and the positioning of the product have to match the consumer's values.
Through my observation today, I realized that some clients can be very unreasonable. They rush the agency to meet the deadline although they are not planning to launch the ad campaign anytime soon and they always have demands that are almost impossible to meet. Today, the Telekom client made Maryam and I wait for her at the parking lot for half an hour and she didn't even bother to apologize to us when she finally came down. Although Maryam did grumble in the car before the client came down, she was smiling all the way to the studio and talked politely to the client. It's not that she was two-faced; she was just doing her job.
Maryam informed me that Batey Ads has a few retainer accounts (it means that these clients have signed a contract with Batey Ads and whether the clients have jobs for the agency to do or not, the clients still have to pay the agency) and they are Telekom Malaysia, BMW, Peugeot, and MOT (Ministry Of Transport).
I had lotsa fun at the studio today with Julian Yap (the Creative Director), Ronnie Lim (the AV Director) and of course, my newfound friend, Maryam... hehehe... we were talking and laughing and joking at the studio... they are really nice, ya know... I feel like I'm part of a big, happy family... I'm the only intern at Batey Ads, btw... and yet I have 6 mentors and they are all directors from different departments (Group Account Director, Account Director, Strategic Planning Director, Creative Director, Creative Services Director and AV Director). I feel so blessed to be working at Batey Ads cuz the ppl there are willing to teach me so many things and they treat me like family... ;D
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