Pocholo "The VoiceMaster" Gonzales on MMDA On the Road (June 2014)

Pocholo Gonzales 'The VoiceMaster' featured on AHA GMA 7 (September 2013)

Pocholo 'The VoiceMaster' showed his talent in Sweet Life QTV (November 2013)

Record breaking crowd attends TechTutor5

Manila, Philippines – If attendance is any measure of interest, the fifth annual TechTutor seminar clearly shows how technology has created an impact in the way people do things – in work, in play and in education.

The one-day seminar held on September 24, 2013, at the Mall of Asia ARENA, drew a record-breaking crowd from nearly sixty (60) universities consisting of educators, learners, administrators, and parents. The theme of this year’s Techtutor seminar is all about “Gamification of Education”.

“In its five years of existence, Techtutor5 is the biggest ever and we only have the Lord to thank. He provided us with a beautiful weather that enabled our attendees to come to the venue safely. Of course, we would like to thank all our attendees as well for making Techtutor5 a huge success,” said Jerry Liao, Chief Operations Officer of Infochat. “Our crowd was treated to an afternoon full of fun and with a new found knowledge that gamifying education can be more effective and be more efficient.”

Experts from various fields like Johanson Tiu (Science), Noel L. Flores (Art), Archie Lawrence P. Geneta (Communication), Pocholo Gonzales (Voice Acting) and Ms. Olen Juarez-Lim (Image development) were at hand to share their expertise and to demonstrate how gamification can be applied to their respective subjects.

Techtutor5 is supported by Acer, AMA University, Brother, Canon, Dell, Engenius, Fujifilm, Globe Telecom, HP, iSecure, Kaspersky, Lenovo, Microsoft, MMD, Samsung, Smart Communications, Sony, and WSI.

Gamification of Learning typically involves applying game design thinking to non-game applications like education to make them more fun and engaging. Gamification can potentially be applied to any industry and almost anything to create fun and engaging experiences, converting users into players.

Courtesy of Tempo Online

The VoiceMaster Pocholo Gonzales on Aksyon TV

The VoiceMaster featured in Spotlight (February 2014)

The VoiceMaster Pocholo Gonzales featured in Wow Batangas (September 2012)

What You Should REALLY Do to Make Your Business Successful

You opened a new restaurant in town. Your site is where your target market roams around everyday for work or school. You have the best marketing plans to magnetize people to go try your stuff. But in less than six months, your stats start whispering that soon, you are going to close down your business.

Ouch. Ever wonder why a seemingly good and perfectly-planned business fall down too easily just like that? And why in the world that small eatery nearby is still standing proud and growing?

Last week, I attended a seminar organized by Philippine Marketing Association – Batangas Chapter dubbed as “Trojan Marketing: How Brilliant Marketing Ideas Turn Ugly and How Simple Ideas Emerge Successfully”.

The seminar was chopped into two. Part one was all about personal branding as discussed by the talented and uniquely entertaining Pocholo “The VoiceMaster” Gonzales (who did countless of dubbing for animations, movies, TVCs, etc) and part two was the main chunk about Trojan Marketing as dissected by Lloyd Luna, a business consultant, motivational speaker, author of a couple of business books, pianist, etcetera.

Personal branding is basically how you market yourself to the world (www.stevepavlina.com). Why is it important and what does it have to do with your business?

Say for example, you own a fashion store. You’re selling the most stylish to-die-for pieces but you’re a shabby chic. How do you think your customers will believe that you actually sell clothes and stuffs that will make heads turn and gain overflowing compliments about beauty and style?

Personal branding, according to Pocholo Gonzales, can be achieved and maintained by being consistent, by writing about you and your business on blogs or any medium you think of, by creating an output of interest for your customers, and by extending a helping hand to others (knock knock, that’s what CSRs are for). And oh, if you practice online marketing, Gonzales advised that you pay attention to Google. Yes, sir.

Moving on to Trojan Marketing. For marketing practitioners, have you heard of this new type of marketing? Yes, the basis has something to do with the Trojan Horse from Greek mythology. Lloyd Luna pointed out ‘carelessness’ as a major culprit why good people fail.

Trojan Marketing, according to Luna, is “the art of ingraining the message by breaking the buyer’s wall to hit the emotion”. He talked about perceived value (of one’s good), branding (the importance of the name, the logo, the packaging), knowing your market and how you will be able to ‘break that wall’ a.k.a your customer’s perception of what you’re selling.

I won’t be discussing here all that they’ve shared in the seminar but allow me to share two lines from Luna that might inspire you to think further as well.

One: “Comfort zone is kill zone”. Challenge yourself and do what else you think you can do. Get out of the box and perhaps be bolder, braver in taking risks. But…

Two: “Avoid being everything to everybody”. Unless you own a shopping mall that says they’ve got it all for you. Winks.

Starting a business involves risks. If you won’t dare to materialize your ideas, they will remain as they are — ideas floating, wanting to burst out of your mind. And hey, if you want to know more about Pocholo and Lloyd, Google them. They’re so available online.

Courtesy of Wow Batangas

Voice it out (December 2012)

          In the Philippines, a name that has become synonymous with voice-overs is CreatiVoices Productions. It is a company cofounded by Pocholo “Voicemaster” Gonzales, himself a longtime voice actor.

          Doing voice-overs has grown into a lucrative part-time industry due to the continuing expansion of the electronic media. “Before, voice acting was just for radio,” says Gonzales. “Now there’s also the Internet, PodCasts, video games, and cartoon and TV show dubbing.

          The most popular of these voice-over applications, he says, are audio- book recordings, animation or TV show dubbings, original content (pre-voice recording), and radio and TV advertisements.  Voice-over talents, who are paid on a per project basis, can actually earn some P30,000 to P50,000 for doing audio books alone, which are mostly textbook translations; about P10,000 to P20,000 for radio and television advertisements ; P500 to P1,000 per episode for anime and soap opera dubbings; and up to P30,000 for original content creation.

          So how does one get into the voice-over business? Gonzales says that voice-over training is a prerequisite no matter how good the aspiring voice-over talent is, and he emphasizes that doing voice-overs is not just a hobby but an art and a profession.

          Indeed, this was why Gonzales decided in 2007 to put up the Philippine Center for Voice Acting, the first and only professional voice acting school in the Philippines. He established Creativoices itself with an initial capital of only P20,000, but it has become almost an industry by itself.

          As the training arm of CreatiVoices, the center conducts a two-month voice acting program for a selected number of students using modules imported from the United States.

          “When you train with us, in one day I can make you create 20 voices,” says Gonzales. He says that although the center does not guarantee voice-over jobs to students who finish the program, it gives them support in landing voice-over contracts.

          In fact, almost a quarter of his stable of 400 local voice-over talents are graduates of the program, and a lot of his talents find work with other voice-over companies. He explains the industry practice: “Even among my talents, there are no exclusive contracts. In my own case, I’m not exclusive to my own company; I work with different recording studios as well.”

          Considering that projects don’t come regularly, he also cautions voice-over talents to treat doing voice-overs strictly as a “sideline” profession.

          Active in the industry for over 15 years now, Gonzales has done voice-over projects for hundreds of radio and TV commercials for practically all of the major telecommunication companies, fastfood chains, beverage companies, financial institutions, and government agencies as well as politicians on the campaign trail.

          Some of his former students at CreatiVoices have done very well themselves upon finishing its voice-over training program.

          For instance, Jo Carol Fernandez communications sophomore at the Miriam College in Quezon City, has done many voice-over projects for anime shows since finishing the training. She says she dubbed voices for major characters in the shows Bokura Ga Ita (26 episodes) and Negima as well as for other projects outside CreatiVoices.

          On the other hand, Mark B. Aragona, writer and financial consultant, received an offer to do three advertisements for a large telecom company barely a month after finishing his voice-over training. “Let’s just say I made five times my investment for those ads,” he says. Aragona likes the fact that doing voice-overs is very flexible in terms of time. Although some projects can take up to an hour, he says, doing 15 minutes of voice-over work for an advertisement is already long.

          Voice actors like Fernandez and Aragona are able to cultivate and hone their talent for professional voice-over work through CreatiVoices, which has since grown into an agency with 10 full-time staff and some 500 local and international on-call voice actors. 

          The company has not only given the voice-over industry a common face but now also enjoys instant recognition as the industry leader. Says Gonzales of people wanting to go into doing voice-overs: “If you have a job, and if you’re really good and I want you to take the character, I will wait for you.” And he tells aspiring talents to see doing voice-overs not just as another job but also as a way of having fun, like what he himself does. 

Courtesy of Entrepreneur Philippines