Australian Siri, otherwise known as Karen Jacobsen, was hoping for tips to expand her brand as “the GPS Girl.” Her mellifluous antipodean accent can also be heard in GPS systems around the world, and that’s a hook the 46-year-old singer and voice-over artist has been using to promote herself as a motivational speaker. (“It’s never to late to recalculate,” is her slogan.)
Judson Laipply, an inspirational comedian who found YouTube fame in 2006 as the creator of a six-minute video called the Evolution of Dance, which has accrued more than 290 million views, wants to make a 10th-anniversary video before his dancing days are over (Mr. Laipply is 39).
And P. K. Ewing, a wounded former Marine reservist who served in Iraq, was looking for help honing the message of a project he’s working on with some of his combat buddies to break endurance records on Jet Skis.
In two rooms on the eighth floor of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square last Friday, the National Speakers Association (who knew?) was holding a media lab, one of three days of presentations to help would-be stars — motivational speakers, mostly — turn up the volume on their brands.
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Jess Todtfeld, 43, an amiable television producer and media trainer, who with a co-writer once set a Guinness world record for being interviewed on the radio the most times in 24 hours (96), was there as an organizer, presenter and one of a number of experts to whom attendees (about 100) could practice pitching and packaging.
The pitch room was filled with skirted tables for two, and trainers like Mr. Todtfeld welcomed their students for 15-minute sessions. It was sort of like speed dating, but with terrible lighting.
Ms. Jacobsen, lanky and blond and bedazzled with rhinestone cuffs and a rhinestone lanyard for her ID badge, settled into her seat for her session with Mr. Todtfeld and noted that the engine of her brand, so to speak, had a lot to do with using the metaphor of the GPS system.
“I talk about how people can listen to their inner GPS,” she said, “and that it’s never too late to recalculate.”
Like many attendees, Ms. Jacobsen dreamed of a television series, which she envisioned as a variety-show format mashed up with the offerings of Dr. Phil (that is, inspirational tales with games and prizes), but she also wanted to promote herself as a commentator or guest on news or entertainment programs. So she and Mr. Todtfeld talked news pegs.
Ms. Jacobsen had just received her American driver’s license. Might that be a good hook? “Something about how the voice who tells millions of people where to go can now tell herself where to go?” she asked.
Meanwhile, Sandra LaFlamme, a real estate broker from Sarasota, Fla., was practicing a phone pitch to a mythical television host — played by Susan Solovic, a small-business expert and entrepreneur whose slogan is #OutrageousSuccess, according to her business card — about the tax implications of something or other.
This reporter wasn’t sure of the pitch details because she became overwhelmed by the thought that Ms. LaFlamme, who clearly knew her stuff, was wasting her talents rehearsing cold-calling, a promotional method as outmoded as the equipment that once bolstered it, the Rolodex.
”No one answers their work phone,” she finally burst out, alarming both trainer and trainee, and that way enacting an extreme version of the observer effect.
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At another table, Geeta Nadkarni, a media trainer who teaches a course called “Baby Got Booked,” was coaching Mr. Ewing, the Marine reservist, who said he struggled for years with back and other injuries after an ambush in Iraq.
His project, called “Take Point Now,” was a little complicated and involved him and a few of his battalion mates, who were retrofitting Jet Skis for wounded veterans and also hoping to set a few records, including crossing the Atlantic on a Jet Ski.
”We’re just a bunch of Marines in a garage with Jet Skis,” he said. “We need sponsors and we need to get out there.”
The message, of inspiring veterans through teamwork, didn’t fold easily into a sound bite, but Ms. Nadkarni had one.
”It’s one plus one equals 11,” she said firmly.
Mr. Laipply, the YouTube star, said that his main tip for media star hopefuls was gleaned from being backstage with Tiger Woods when they were both booked on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”
It was long ago, Mr. Laipply said, well before Mr. Woods’s image unraveled, and the makeup artist was trying, unsuccessfully, to get the golf star to wear makeup, or at least a little powder.
”And I remember thinking to myself,” Mr. Laipply continued, “ ‘You can’t refuse the powder. You’re not Tiger Woods.’ ”
A life lesson, indeed.
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