Aaron Marcus, a veteran actor and coach, explains why actors bomb commercial auditions: they try to sell the product instead of playing the character. Read the copy to find the internal shift from skepticism to belief, then perform that journey naturally. Casting directors want personality and believability, not a pitch.
Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and first of all, welcome to my Acting and Modeling Quick Tips channel, and welcome to my acting and modeling family. As a matter of fact, if you click the subscribe and notification button, you will automatically be part of my family, and then every time I create a new video and upload it here, you'll be notified. So definitely do that. Really quickly, just to let you know, this video is going to be a little bit longer than most of my other videos. It might be like 4 and a half minutes or so, just because there's some really, really important things I got to The other thing too is, if you're not familiar with me, I've been a full-time actor for over 30 years. I've been really fortunate. I've booked over 1,200 jobs from films, TV, commercials, radio spots, training films. And you can always go to my IMDb page to learn more about my work or visit howtoactamodel.com. You can learn more about me. But here's the key thing. Before I get started, I have a request. When you guys are at an audition— when I say guys, I mean men and women— when you're at an audition, do me a favor. Don't do what I heard a lot of people do at a recent audition. People were just talking about themselves. Yeah, I booked this job. I had a recurring role on this. I worked with this director. It's like, what's wrong with us? I mean, when you're sitting around with other doctors, I'm sure they're not talking about, hey, I just did a great hip replacement yesterday. Oh, man. You know, I had to fix this guy's femur. Oh, my God, man, it was incredible. Like, people don't talk about that. You know, why don't we just sit— if— well, first of all, I can just let you know, at an audition, I'm really not going to be talking to people until after my audition just because I'm going to be preparing. But if you are going to talk, why can't you just talk about your family, your personal life? I mean, just share information. So anyhow, that's just a request. Let me get into the one thing that people do at a TV commercial audition that will kill their chances of getting booked. Now, because I had to sign an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement, I can't tell you the specifics of the commercial. So I'm not even gonna tell you what the product is. I'm gonna make up another product just so I can give you specific examples of what you don't want to do. So number one, you gotta read over the copy, the words in the commercial, really, really carefully a bunch of times. And what I was finding a lot of people were doing, and the reason why I know it is because it's a very small casting room And everybody's standing right outside the door of where the casting is taking place. You can hear the casting director, you can hear the director talking to the actor, you can hear the actor doing the audition. So let's just say the first line is, I feel great, yeah. And so the biggest problem that actors make when they're auditioning for a TV commercial is they try to sell the product. Don't, don't sell the product. Never sell the product. Unless you are a spokesperson, but that's a whole other category. For most commercials, lifestyle They just want to get a glimpse of you. They want to get a sense of your personality. So I was hearing a lot of actors during their audition, hey, I feel great! Yeah! Yeah! And you know, because they're trying to sell this product. What you want to do is just say it. Just say it. And when I read the copy, and I read it a bunch of times, it became very clear to me That there's a change that took place. So what I decided to do was instead of, hey, I feel great, yeah, I'm actually very skeptical and I'm starting off with, yeah, yeah, I feel great, yeah. And then all of a sudden, I noticed that there was an area where all of a sudden I'm starting to get convinced, hey, maybe this stuff really will help me because at first, I'm really unsure. I'm thinking, yeah, come on, you're telling me this stuff's really going to work? That's the way you want to play. Where you just talk it out, you come up with a decision about your character. Do you see this change take place? But I can guarantee you, if you try to sell the product, it's not going to happen. And I know that sometimes people will say, you know, for commercials, it's just your look. You know, if you have the right look, you're going to get the job. It really does— you know, there's nothing I can do. That's not true either, because look, A great casting director is only gonna bring people in who look right for the part. And so once you clear that hurdle, if you're in there, then it comes to the factor of, do you make this interesting? Do you sound believable? Do you do something that grabs people's attention? So anyhow, look, I have no idea if I'm gonna book the job. I can tell ya, I had a great time today. It was so much fun. I was in there for about 2 and a half minutes, but man, it was a lot of fun. So anyhow, I just wanted to share that Make sure, don't sell the product. Very last thing I just wanted to mention. As you can imagine, keeping this channel going, having people work on it for me, the time commitment, it does take a lot of time and money to keep this thing going. So I just wanted to ask a favor. If you find this information helpful, there are tons of other videos that you can watch. I'd greatly appreciate you making a donation. There's a link Right below, and it goes straight into the PayPal account. And, and that way you can become a part of the acting and modeling family here. And once again, whether it's $10, $5, $1, doesn't make any difference. I'd really appreciate you helping out. So feel free, share this with other people. And I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. Thank you.
