Hello beautiful people! And welcome, new BonBlast subscribers! 🙂 Ooh, how I *love* Get in Gear for the New Year season for all the fun folks it brings into our orbit. Hooray!
(Not signed up for that totally FREE year-end Self-Management for Actors training? Fix that right away.)
Today we’re gonna chat about a nuance to your targeting work. (I have a LOT to say about targeting; take a deep dive if this is new to you.)
There are three elements to consider when deciding a show is a target. (We always start with a *show* — where the data gets clearer faster — and then when you’ve built up a muscle for your targeting homework, you can expand this work to feature films, pilots, commercials, even plays! And then of course all this leads to targeting your hell-yes rep!)
The three elements are tier, type, and vibe.
Tier: Does the show regularly cast actors of my tier (or just a hair above it)? (New to tiers? I’ve gotchoo.)
Type: Do actors of my type regularly show up in roles that actors of my tier are taking on? (Don’t know your most castable brand? Um… join us for some FREE training that will rock your world.)
Vibe: Every show exists in a *world*. There’s a vibe to it. There’s a feel to the network it’s on. There’s an environment, a culture, a texture to all of its marketing. (THE SAME IS TRUE ABOUT YOU, DEAR.)
Do these things line up?
All three of them?
When you do the targeting homework, you’re finding actors of your tier, type, and vibe regularly booking work on this show?
If so, that’s a mighty fine target!
If any of those items is askew (like, type and vibe line up beautifully, but no one OF your type and vibe really books ’til they’re at a much higher tier — y’know, like you’re way too good-looking to be a co-star in a CW world because you’d distract from the leads, so… you’ve gotta build up credits elsewhere before this show is aligned with your tier), find a better target.
No matter how badly you want to be on that show.
Find a target for which all three elements align. Otherwise, you’re just signing up for frustration.
Yes, this is precision work, but the homework you put into this research is worth it!
Because for every 1000 actors who are slinging spaghetti at the wall and hoping something will stick with their submissions, there is ONE ninja who will *actually* put in this work.
Good.
Their methodology will ultimately fail them, even if a noodle sticks now and then.
Your methodology? It’ll align you with buyers who perceive you as a solution.
And when you’re out there solving PROBLEMS for a living? Word gets out. You become a booking machine.
So, let’s have at it, shall we?
Don’t wanna wait ’til next week’s FREE challenge to start jamming on the daily? Lock in our 2018 pricing for 100 days that *will* change your life.
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Got any questions for me about your tier, type, and vibe?
Pop ’em in the comments just below or come jam with us in the SMFA Ninjas Facebook group! 🙂 We love going deeper with this work!
All my love,
Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!
Thank you Bonnie! You’re like a sun in the acting world that never sets, shining your light and sharing your info!
Thank you, Corinne. Very sweet.
Hi Bonnie! I have a couple questions about this fantastic targeting business:
1. Do you have any suggestions for quickly/efficiently knowing if a show casts your type at the co-star level? My process right now involves bouncing back and forth between an episode and IMDB, and doing this for the most recent 5ish episode of a show, which takes quite a bit of time for each show. Am I overthinking it?
2. How specific should I be with defining “vibe”? Is it possible for a comedy and a drama to have the same vibe, and if not does that mean I should stick with one or the other when I’m targeting buyers?
Thank you for all that you do! 🙂
You’re doing the work right, in #1. If you can also find the character breakdowns that were released at the time of the casting, you can also just read how many roles are co-start, guest-star, etc., but those are harder to come across for some shows. It’ll get faster the more you do it because you’ll see patterns enough to know you’ve done the amount of research it takes to know for sure about YOUR type at that tier. 🙂
You could lump the vibes across genres like that but generally they’re even more split-up-able than you’d think! Go with layers if you can. Like there’s this big blanket level that covers everything you want to do, and then at a certain layer the comedies are more X and the dramas are more Y, and that gets even more granular at the next layer. Make sense?
Glad you’re putting in the work! It’s fun (and it does get easier)!