VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
Pam Conley manipulates nuances and inflections to get the message across. By JANE HAWES.
Pam Conley has the kind of job where she has been roused from bed at 2 a.m. It requires her to drink water constantly and to avoid airplane travel during election seasons. She lives in fear of laryngitis, but doesn't hesitate to bellow when the Buckeyes are fourth and goal in the 'Shoe.
"You have to know how to yell," explained Conley as she tapped her stomach. "From the diaphragm. That's the theatre training."
Conley lives a life in delicate balance, all in service to vocal cords that have made her one of the most successful voice-over artists in the country. Hers is the friendly voice that tells you when you have connected to the AT&T network, the soothing voice that navigates you through filing a complaint with a utility company, and the concerned voice that has both promoted and pummeled political candidates in countless radio and TV ads.
It wasn't the career Conley envisioned as a theatre major, but it began very soon after she graduated in 1975. Three summers of work in musical theatre had convinced her that a life on the stage wasn't for her.
"I said I would look for something in P.R. or advertising," Conley said, "and one of the first agencies I contacted asked, ‘Do you do commercials?'"
Conley found John Fippin, a sound engineer and owner of a Columbus recording studio, who helped her produce a demo tape. The rest is audio history.
The two still work together often. One recent morning, Conley popped over to Fippin's Magnetic Studios, just a few miles from her Upper Arlington home, and within an hour they had created a breathlessly hip audition recording for a very hip computer company, as well as knocking out a six-part voice-mail greeting for an insurance conglomerate.
Commercial voice-overs, film narrations, and political ads might be the glamour jobs, but IVR--Interactive Voice Response--is Conley's bread and butter.
"I call them my ‘pay the mortgage, electric, and dog food bill' jobs," she said.
IVR jobs are the ones where she may have to record countless single sound bites, including every letter of the alphabet, every day of the week, every month of the year, as well as single numbers. "Pam's math skills are legendary," cracked Fippin. "She can count to 1,000, one at a time."
A computer will assemble the sounds into those automated phone responses that consumers are so familiar with.
Conley said her career benefited from a dramatic change in the voice-over industry. When she began working more than three decades ago, a woman's voice was not in high demand for many jobs other than retail ads.
"Political ads and narrations used to be more "announcer-y," she said. "I went to the Democrats first about getting jobs, but they told me, ‘We don't hire women.' They said they wanted a ‘voice of authority.'"
"The days of that voice are gone," Fippin added. "Now they want almost the anti-announcer. They want a real person."
"It just got a little bit looser," Conley said. "Instead of me telling you what to do, it's more like me sitting at the kitchen table, saying"--her voice dropped half an octave and melted into a firm yet soothing tone--"‘This is what I think we should do about this problem.'"
It's this ability to create scenes in her mind that is essential to creating good voice-overs. Conley said her training in theatre helped hone those skills, but so did a broad-based liberal arts education.
"It's the psychology and the sociology," Conley said. "And sometimes it's just downright people-watching."
Thanks to technological advances, Conley does not have to leave town as often as she used to for jobs, even those on the other side of the world. That's fine by her. Protecting her voice from illness is a job unto itself.
"I'm that person who wipes down the shopping cart handle in grocery stores," she said. "I wash my hands a lot, and I try to avoid flying on planes, especially during election season."
Spring primaries and autumn general elections bring constant work for Conley.
"I have gotten calls at 2 o'clock in the morning because it really is 24/7 in the political season," Conley said. She'll roll out of bed and report to the studio to record an ad that might run within hours in Buffalo or Seattle.
With 2008 upon her, she's hoping for the "Holy Grail" of political ad jobs, an affiliation with one presidential candidate. An announcer's voice, after all, can be matched to only one candidate in any race, and to keep her jobs straight, Conley has to align herself with just one side. In her case, it's the Republican party, though she demurred when asked whether she agrees with any particular political platform.
"I'm a professional," she said. "I always find something in any commercial to believe in."
In fact, Conley has only one taboo. "I will never do an accent," she said. "You only end up annoying or insulting people."
Hear Pam Conley: http://www.pamconley.com
