For a company founded in 1995, and online only a mere four years, Florida-based SunSpots Productions is revolutionizing the method in which advertisers, ad agencies and independent marketers find voice talent. For advertisers, one of the bigger challenges is giving voice to online or offline ads. Finding the right voice to market a product can be both time-consuming and expensive. This week, the audio production facility and voice talent agency, SunSpots Productions, launched its unique and groundbreaking voice talent search engine via its Web site.

Via phone interview, Ryan Salazar, CIO of SunSpots, remarked on why this system is so useful to marketers and ad agencies alike, “The uniqueness of this system is it allows for people to search for specific types of audio. You can do very specific searches -- for example, a female in her 30’s with a low voice, and a certain regional dialect and our system can bring up all the possibilities for you.

“Anyone can go on our Web site and look for a particular voice to fit their specific needs. We handle about 500 voice artists and there isn’t a fee to shop for talent. We have a specialized talent cart system and you can add talent clips to your talent cart, and then you can e-mail those files as possibilities to your clients. Then, once you get the client’s pick and approval, our studio can go ahead and lay down the audio files.

“Our online system is set up so that we can do it 24 hours, 7 days a week, and we have real-time alerts on the booking requests or estimate requests. We provide free voice talent auditions as well. You can actually send the script to us, and we’ll have a talent read it and then if your clients like the voice they can schedule a real recording session of it.”

When users visit the site and click on "ezCAST", they’re able to search through over 500 voice talents in 50 languages and thousands of audio/video clips. Because SunSpots is such a highly regarded production house, housing over 2,500 audio and video clips, ad agencies are choosing its services over bigger houses. SunSpots Productions ezCAST online casting tool will make the jobs of creative directors, producers, and casting agents more efficient and economically expedient.

The Talent cart also enables users to e-mail links of the talent audio/video clips directly to themselves and their clients, and at the end of the online visit, upon checkout, there is an online scheduling capability as well as that the ability to request that an estimate be e-mailed within hours of the request.

Whether you’re looking for baritone, monotone or some tone in between, the company’s offerings and its business are booming in stereophonic sound. “We’re getting close to a million hits a month,” states Salazar. “We’re growing by 10% a month and most of our visitors are coming from the Web, we had about 66 of our newest 70 clients that found us through Google search engine and a lot of our clients come via word of mouth as well.”

Salazar noted, “Literally we can find anyone and record the spot in hours. We have a built-in FTP application on our site so clients can get their audio without buying the software, which cuts the cost considerably for agencies. We have 2,500 audio and video clips where they get an idea of what they’re looking for. If you need a Santa Claus and we don’t have the voice you’re looking for, then we’ll immediately audition Santa’s and put them up on the site. We do 15 or 20 talent at a time when we audition. And then the prospective buyer can choose from that pool of folks.”

In the world of advertising and production, time is money and with ezCAST, clients like Brad Moore, VP of production at Convergence, say the expediency of ezCast is a big selling point. Moore comments, "I'm really excited about SunSpots' new casting addition to their Web site, ezCAST. In the hectic world of production -- every minute counts and with ezCAST I can find the voice I need in half the time."

And what is SunSpot going to do to top this offering? Salazar exclusively shared with us that later this week it is launching eSession, which will allow clients the capability to view their television or video spot in real-time while working-to-picture with the SunSpot’s production side.

“Traditionally people would have to go to a local studio to have the capability and now they can do it from home or office without leaving, which saves money, travel and studio time.” Salazar noted as well that SunSpot is also going to be providing via the Internet, delivery of finished television spots and video production projects.