How Becoming a Google Glass Explorer Benefited Voices.com

By: David Ciccarelli

When I entered Google’s Twitter contest, “#IfIHadGlass”, a year ago, I didn’t expect how much my company, Voices.com, would benefit from the publicity fallout.

Working from San Francisco at the time as part of the Canadian Technology Accelerator, I tweeted that if I had the opportunity to purchase Google Glass, I would do “something incredibly entrepreneurial with sound and the human voice,” Google noticed, and made me one of only 3 Canadians invited to join the exclusive Google Glass Explorer program. One trip to New York City’s Google office later and I was known as the first Explorer in Canada.

Becoming a sort of beta tester for Google’s wearable technology had its own set of perks, which included having access to the gadget that everyone was talking about, show and tells with my team in the office, and a way to make friends with perfect strangers everywhere I went while wearing Glass. However, being an entrepreneur, I knew not to waste this marketing opportunity, and had a loose plan in place when I returned from New York with Glass in June that included a press release and some outreach to media.

That informal plan resulted in an explosion of opportunities for the company. After local media had done the rounds on the local business owner with the interesting headgear, bigger, national outlets took notice, with Voices.com phone lines and inboxes lit up with media queries. CTV’s Canada AM was one such outlet that invited me onto their show to discuss the new tech, as well as Metro Morning, CBC’s Radio Ontario Morning, Business News Network, and various radio shows. These live and pre-recorded interviews put Voices.com in front of audiences of people who had never before given a thought to where voice overs come from, and who were now being exposed not only to the company, but also to our association with “the cool, popular kid,” otherwise known as Google.

This is earned media that is worth its weight in proverbial gold for an SME, as access to these new audiences results in not only new ambassadors, but also potential customers. We leveraged the print and online mentions of my title as the first Canadian Google Glass Explorer by making sure that every story had a mention of Voices.com, and therefore, a link back to our website which attracted new users and brought fresh web traffic to us. 

While travelling to opportunities and carrying out interviews, Google Glass also presented me with the chance to connect with celebrities and to tell the Voices.com story. For example, Google Glass got me a connection with Thunder Bay-born Paul Shaffer of the Late Night with David Letterman – the pictorial evidence is up on my Twitter account, - at a Toronto hotel, while a street interview with CBC News resulted in an impromptu meet and greet with Jian Ghomeshi, who ended up using Glass to email my wife from my account.

Beyond getting the chance to bend the ear of well-known personalities, Google Glass also established the company as “the hip place to be” when we organized a “Google Glass Open House.” After realizing that we could never honour the number of one-on-one requests pouring in from those eager to give Glass a spin, we decided to create an intimate event where we would open our doors to our local peers for trials and office tours. We expected about 30 people to attend for the after-hours event. To our surprise, over 200 people flooded into the Voices.com space. Individuals waited in line for nearly 3 hours to spend just 2 minutes with the new tech, posing for pictures and test driving applications. Media picked up on the event, and social platforms were alight with updates and images about the affair. This was over 6 months ago, and people are still bright-eyed when reminiscing about the experience. Many of the attendees’ profile pictures on Twitter and Facebook are still set to headshots from our open house. You cannot buy popularity or attention like that- Google Glass brought it all to our doorstep for us.  

The demo format from the open house translated into speaking engagements for myself and my staff, which resulted in even more publicity for the business. Ivey Business School at Western University’s LEAD program, was one such opportunity, as were a panel discussion at the Ivey Entrepreneurship Club, OIART, the Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre’s Small Business Week, and JCI London’s launch, just to name a few. I was also invited to participate in Lunettes Google, Glass Stories, a project carried out by a group of grad students in France. Other podcasts and video interviews followed.

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The amount of publicity and opportunities we received, just from the happy circumstance of being picked to purchase Google Glass before others through a Twitter contest, has been staggering- and invaluable. Should anyone ever question the value of Twitter, I now have the entire Google Glass experience to answer with.



Guest Blogger- David Ciccarelli

David, currently nominated for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, has been running a web business since 2002 and has helped over 100,000 voice actors showcase their talent. Over the past 10 years, David, with the help of his team, has grown Voices.com from the ground up to become the leader in the industry. As Chief Executive Officer, David is responsible for setting the vision, executing the growth strategy and managing the company on a day-to-day basis. Clients like ABC, NBC, Google, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and thousands of others use Voices.com to search for, audition and hire professional voice actors. David is the author of Voice Acting For Dummies (Wiley Publishing, 2013) and has been selected by Google to be a Google Glass Explorer. 

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This is the third blog in a series of guest blogs by David Ciccarelli, keep an eye out for his next one! You can find the first one on buying the Voices.com domain name here.