Actor Aaron Marcus explains how traditional slow seasons in entertainment no longer follow predictable patterns. When work dries up, he sends personalized emails to agents and casting directors, like one referencing a stranger who recognized him from House of Cards in Alaska. The personal touch generates responses and opens doors.
Here's another acting and modeling quick tip with me, Aaron Marcus. I used to be able to predict pretty exactly as to when acting and modeling jobs would be happening, when they would be slow. Used to be November through December, even halfway into January, things were kind of dead in the advertising world because all the budgets were already used up. Although that's still kind of true for advertising. There used to be a pilot season that only took place kind of like the end of February, March, April, May. And there is still a pilot season. But pilots now are shot year-round. Typically July, August, things were kind of dead. I mean, there's still films, TV shows being shot, but generally it's pretty quiet. People are vacationing. But now I can't. And sometimes when there are periods that are slow or I think they should be slow, things are hopping. So if things are slow for you at any time period, here's a suggestion. This is something I'm doing right now while work is slow during the summer. I've been sending emails to agents. Sometimes I've sent actual letters. Here's the trick though. Always make it personal. Don't just do one generic email, one generic letter, and then just send it out to tons of different people. Try to personalize it. So what I just recently did was I just got back from a really life-altering vacation in Alaska. And In this letter, I was letting people know that I was in this really small town in the middle of nowhere that we had to fly to, and we were at this little cafe and somebody recognized me for being on House of Cards. And I thought that was pretty cool. So I mentioned something about that in the email to the agents and, you know, just to let them know I am back now. And it's really interesting because then all of a sudden I started a little conversation with quite a few people, not only agents but photographers and casting directors and some Sometimes people were talking about their experiences in Alaska. It's someplace I always wanted to go. Do you have any pictures? And so it's just really helpful to make that human contact, that personal contact when you are trying to stay in touch with people and just, you know, don't do standard generic letters or emails. If you have any suggestions on what you do as a way of marketing and staying in touch, please share that information below with everybody. If you're watching this on Facebook, like it. If you're watching this on YouTube, give it a thumbs up. And if you have any questions for me, always feel free to either go to facebook.com/howtomodel. When you do like that page, you will automatically be sent all the new information I post there. And you can also reach me through howtoactandmodel.org. And you can also— when you go there, you can get 3 free videos that will be really helpful to you. I'm Aaron Marcus, and I look forward to talking with you again soon. Thank you.
