One of the biggest and best blowbacks of the digital age is the ease with which voice actors can audition for parts from anywhere.

And here is a hot-off-the-griddle casting call from WGGRN for its Grizzly Clay Oxen Old Time Radio Western show.

Radio serials are just plain fun. This one sounds like it will be anchored firmly in Western values and peopled with colorful characters that voice actors can sink their teeth into.

Radio dramas and comedies show off the power, flexibility and reach of long-format audio. But those same benefits are available whatever the length of the audio.

If you’d like to put the power, flexibility and reach of audio to work for your business, shoot us an email.

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• Radio Yesterday (farpointmedia.com)

From pages 8-9 of Radio Scriptwriting edited by Sam Boardman-Jacobs:

Nothing is impossible: a lump of rock can philosophise on the ages of man; a child can speak to its mother from the womb; the writer can take the listener to the Battle of Waterloo or to the spaceship Mir without bankrupting the budgets. But, to me, radio’s greatest strength is its ability to creep up on a listener and shake him or her to the core. In a time when we have become anaesthetised by television images of violence, war, deprivation, displacement and famine, radio is, I believe, the most influential and powerful of all the media in that it speaks directly to the individual. It can break down barriers by raising awareness and promoting tolerance and understanding. (In the wrong hands, it can be used to devastating effect.)

Ms. Leicester was speaking about broadcast radio in particular, but other forms of audio delivery — such as podcasts — work similarly.

Laurent LaSalle is a Montreal-based podcaster and web designer who loves technology, the social Web and music.

His latest post explains how to create a podcast. The post includes the age-old advice of teachers and parents and mentors everywhere: Commencez aujourd’hui. Start today.

His get-started-today list is an excellent reminder that audio and sound casting should not be limited in your mind to only the English language. If you want your business to come alive, habla tambien en español and aussi parlez en français — keep other languages in mind from the start.

Handcrafted ’Casts can provide voice talent in a number of different languages to dramatize your business.

Ready to bring your business to life? Drop us a line.

An earlier post here reported on an analysis of already conducted research that showed that radio is the most popular audio medium.

Now a new Nielsen analysis of a media study conducted by the Council for Research Excellence found that broadcast radio reaches 77% of adults daily.

Only broadcast television reached further, with 95%.

Third in reach was online (excluding email), with 64%.

So audio is likely an excellent medium for reaching your audience, whoever that audience is.

Ready to bring your business to life? Drop us a line.

(Hat tip: Media Post.)

A new survey in the United Kingdom by Ipsos Mori on behalf of think-tank Demos surveyed a thousand 16- to 50-year-olds with internet access. One in ten of survey respondents admitted to illegal music downloads. Those self-admitted music pirates spent twice as much on buying music as the non-pirates.

Basically, they used the illegal downloads for product testing and knowledge-gathering.

File that nugget away to ponder as a marketing strategy.

When you’re ready to create easily swiped audio, drop us a line. We’ll bring your business to life.

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• UK study finds that people who illegally download music are biggest paying music consumers (crunchgear.com)
• Music pirates spend more on music than their legal, law-abiding brethren (downloadsquad.com)
• POLL: Illegal Downloaders Buy the Most Music (mashable.com)
• Illegal Downloaders Spend More on Music [File Sharing] (lifehacker.com)
• Heavy illegal downloaders buy more music (boingboing.net)

According to Matt Rosoff at Digital Noise and based on a secondary analysis of a 2008 media study, broadcast radio remains the most popular audio medium.

We like to listen to the radio.

Even those of us welded to mobile and digital audio:

About 12 percent of users listen to portable MP3 players on any given day, about 10 percent listen to digital media files stored on a computer, and only about 9 percent listen to streamed audio (including online radio).

There is a lot of overlap.

The good news is that a digital audio file can be distributed in many different ways. Don’t feel limited to just one.

Interested?

Drop us a line. We’ll bring your business to life.

(Hat tip: Louis Guitosi via Twitter.)

If you’re thinking about online audio, consider the ongoing growth of online radio ad revenues as reported by David Kaplan at PaidContent:

As terrestrial radio ad dollars continue to shrink, the adoption of online radio by listeners and marketers will push the web side into double-digit growth over the next few years, a report by SNL Kagan says. This year, the researcher expects the space to hit $441 million, up 12 percent from $394 million in 2008. It is likely to peak next year, as SNL Kagan projects an annual online revenue growth rate of 20 percent in 2010 to $530 million.

Online radio ad revenue remains a tiny part of overall radio ad revenue, but it’s growth shows an increasing audience acceptance on the new online audio delivery channel.

Sound and audio should be part of your business plan. Need help with production? Drop us a line.

Whew! What a mouthful that subtitle proved to be.

A question floating over the use of sound as a marketing tool is: how to distribute it?

Old-fashioned legacy broadcast radio is only one distribution channel.

Adding a link to the audio file on your company website is another.

Depending on the content, maybe the iTunes store is another possible channel.

This morning I came across Champion Sound, a company that provides email and mobile marketing tools tailor-made for promoting bands.

And right there is another distribution channel: email. If you regularly publish a company e-newsletter, add a regular item that points customers to your online audio.

If you don’t regularly publish a company e-newsletter, think about doing so. (If you want help producing a company e-newsletter, drop me a note.)

Pat Fallon and Fred Senn are co-founders of Fallon Worldwide, now a subsidiary of the French-based Publicis Groups S.A. Since its founding as Fallon McElligott Rice in 1981, their advertising agency has defined and refined the concept of creative leverage “for companies that would rather outsmart the competition than outspend them.”

Chapter 8 of their book, Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity into a Powerful Business Advantage, tells the story of their marketing campaign for BMW. A collaboration with Hollywood, the campaign turned its back on traditional television and used a series of short well-executed online movies to market the BMW Z3 sports car in late 1995 and early 1996, well before online marketing was accepted as a new and effective marketing medium.

Thirteen years later, marketing online is no longer revolutionary but all too often irritating or boring — and ignored.

If you’re looking for an engaging way to reach your target market online, consider a limited series of podcasts that brings your product or service alive through the most intimate medium, audio.

A quick and powerful talk at a recent TED conference by Julian Treasure on four ways that sound affects us:

Watch this video to discover just how important sound can be in support of your product or service — and how destructive it can be if not handled well.

At Handcrafted ’Casts, we design your podcast with sounds to help — not hinder — your message.