Annoying voice-overs can send you running for the kettle or scrambling for the remote to switch stations, but a well crafted voice-over can give the impression that someone’s actually talking to you, while at the same time adding personality to a brand.
Matt Thomas, whose voice has been used in campaigns for Video Ezy, Samsung and MBF to name a few, believes there’s a trend towards ‘voice-acting’rather than voice-overs.
“People today are relatively media savvy and any company plying their wares has to identify more with their market,” Thomas says.
“Voice-overs these days are less about talking at people and more about talking to people.”
Thomas’s voice is usually matched with consumers in their 20s and 30s and he says most clients have hired him on the strength of his every-day, boy-next-door voice, not a put-on or forced tone.
But in the increasingly competitive voice-over industry, he has his own website—www.mattvoice.com—to showcase his versatility and as part of his strategy to maintain “accessibility and profile”.
According to Thomas, the voice is most often matched to the consumer being targeted.
“You don’t often hear a middle-aged man used to promote a product for teen girls, for example, the same as I can’t remember the last time I lent my voice to an ad for a retirement fund,” he says.
Deputy creative director at McCann-Erickson, Jonathon Browne, who also does the odd voice-over for clients, says: “Voice-overs can almost trick the ear into thinking it’s a real person talking to you”.
“More and more we’re looking for less ‘voice-over’ voices and now I’m hearing more voices I haven’t heard before. They’re less polished but with more character.”
“Voice-over guys can sound very polished, which is fine sometimes, but I think using more real people helps you stand out a bit,” Browne says.
Young & Rubicam’s creative group head, Gordon Higgins, says his agency prefers somebody that can bring “character and personality to a voice-over rather than the traditional heavy sell”.
“It adds personality to the brand it’s advertising. It becomes warmer and more personal. It’s like talking with a person rather than listening to somebody shout,” he says.
Higgins adds that advertisers should consider the voice-over artist as the voice of the brand.
“When you hear a voice that’s associated with a certain product or brand, it can either make it live or it can become irritating,” he says.
“There’s a school of thought that says find one voice to represent a brand and let the public become familiar with that voice. But there’s also the point of view that says match the personality of the product to the voice.”
Higgins says if a company has multiple products, it makes sense to use different personalities for each of them.
Head of TV at Saatchi & Saatchi, Ali Grant, says the most common brief is “the voice-over that doesn’t sound like a voice-over”.
“There’s probably a perception that a very professional voice-over sounding voice could be too much like hard sell… We’re looking for somebody that has genuine quality to their voice,”Grant says.
On the issue of overseas advertisements being re-voiced and whether it’s a controversial practice, there are mixed feelings.
“Of course I’ve re-voiced overseas campaigns—it’s more common than people think,” Thomas, who is represented by EM Voices, says.
“Ads that consumers may consider substandard are those where the local voice doesn’t match the lip movements of the actors on screen. But many ads without any visible speaking parts are also re-voiced locally.”
Browne says he has re-voiced ads occasionally—it’s how he got some of his voice-over gigs.
“I hate doing it. In an ideal world you’d always write your own ad and start from the beginning,” he says.
Browne says while he hopes Australians object to American accents in ads now, “in the long term, the more we Americanise our culture the less people will object to American voice-overs on their ads.”
But Higgins says re-voicing doesn’t do anybody any favours.
“The public knows it’s dubbed. The talent or homes are American or Asian or European and then there’s an Australian accent. It becomes about ‘that’s what advertising’s all about, trying to get one over us’,” Higgins says.
He believes the recent signing of the free trade agreement between Australia and the US presents an uncertain future.
“The agreements in the past haven’t helped us so I can’t see how it would help now,” he says.
Grant hopes the impact will be marginal and recalls that when the legislation allowing international ads was introduced, there was talk of the industry’s demise.
“I don’t think the impact was as quite as great as we’d anticipated. I hope [for] the same with the free trade agreement,” she says.
