Voyzcast - Podcast by Voyzapp: Episode 01 - Harness the power of voice overs for advertisements

Hello everyone. Thank you for having me over this Podcast on how to harness the power of voice overs for conversational advertisements. 

Well to start off, in today’s globalised world, advertisements come in many shapes, sizes, and forms such as an attention drawing headline, a catchy jingle, and a good script incorporated with an engaging voice over. In simpler terms, Advertising helps your business evolve by attracting new customers and helping you sell more products and services to existing customers. It can increase profitability, too, by helping increase order size. The many different forms of advertising used by companies are mainly for -

1. Radio Advertisements
2. Television Advertisements
3. Internet Advertisements
4. In-Store Advertisements
5. Print Advertisements

Whether in a subway, grocery store, shopping in arcades or while streaming music applications - one of the most influential part of any advertisement is the voice you hear.

Gone are the days when the visuals in a newspaper prompted customers to take a call to action! Today as more and more brands are using voice overs for ensuring a professional and relatable reputation with the audience, voice acting has become a requirement of almost every campaign. Marketing companies and brands these days are finding creative ways to attract and sustain clients through engaging voice overs.

A high-quality, powerful voice adds life to any advertisement video in a literal sense. The life and spirit of this massive and rapidly expanding industry are professional voice actors who use their voices to connect with customers. The voice actor needs to be able to fit the tone of the brand as well as persuade and sell the product or service. Depending on the target market and demography, the voice may sound like the guy next door, an educated professional or a fun and lively teenager.

 

QUESTION 1: Okay. So, in this digitized age where brands are using voice overs more and more, can you enlist the reasons why there has been such an increased interest to incorporate voice overs in advertising campaigns?

Well, First of all voice overs help to build a humane connection: In our day-to-day lives we’re interacting with text and finding ways to make it more interesting, meaningful and palatable to the audience. And a voice over helps to enhance the overall emotional quotient of the text or read. As a consumer, people are more likely to buy something when they have an emotional tie to the product or service. Voice overs can help in adding a human touch by embodying the feeling of happiness, surprise or compassion in any video script, therefore successfully capturing an audience’s attention. 

Secondly, voice overs provide credibility to the brand: People seek trust in any brand and voice overs are a great way to build that trust of the users with your brand. Native voice actors can build a positive aura of your brand by connecting with them and by attracting attention to a product or service by providing the right character and tone to the advertising message. 

Voice overs help to improve the persuasive power of an Ad: What is the sole purpose of any advert? To create a lasting impact in the minds of the audience and persuade them to take the intended action. Good voice overs encourage the listeners to take a call-to-action. Energetic and enthusiastic voices can guide and convince your listeners to believe everything your advertisement video depicts. 

Next, voice overs can help to enliven Script: Using a conversational voice over can enliven the characters and reinforce the idea presented visually. An engaging and conversational voice that can mould into the character or script can help in portraying the intended feeling better. A voice that identifies with the brand can keep the audience hooked by the narration quality.

Voice overs help to invoke underlying emotions: Incorporating right voice over tone and consistency of voice overs can provide authenticity to your brand. Voice overs create a unique and unforgettable audio as well as visual aid for users that help them to recognize a brand easily. 

So one thing is pretty clear, adding professional voice overs to your Advertisement project can add a lot of value to your overall project and ensure that the intent and emotions don’t get lost along the way. The success of any Advertisement depends on every aspect of it being as engaging and authentic as possible. When it comes to dialogue, this includes not only the right sound engagement, but also the artistry and tone of the characters’ lines.

Question 2: Wow. Professional voice actors can truly change the way one perceives a brand image. So what must a seasoned voice over artist ensure to deliver an engaging and energetic Advertisement voice over?

A seasoned voice helps to paint the picture of the characters and stories in the minds of the audience, so how can you ensure a compelling voice over from the talent? First of all, pick the right voice. For this, you need to understand your requirements and select the voice actor who can identify with your brand. Don’t pick a narrator just because they are a known name.

Choosing the right voice for your production also means that you determine the talent’s role.

Is your voice artist playing the bold announcer? The knowledgeable educator? The elderly person living next door? Let them know the role the voice is playing. Experienced voice over artists will create their own personal backstory to get into that role and execute it with conviction.

1.    Starting off, a good voice artist will always practice to understand the depth of the character and the script before hitting the recording studio. Recording themselves before going to the studio and analyzing the demo can help voice artists establish the right tone and deliver a smooth flow. Also, this reduces the number of retakes in the recording booth that helps in saving time as well as money on auto-tuning and post production activities.

2.    Secondly, knowing the studio equipment beforehand can help the actor ease out during recordings and produce quality narration. Artists with little experience behind microphones make fidgety head movements that can ruin the recording. With an artist who has a deep understanding of studio equipment, you’ll be able to get the read in one read, while another it could take a number of shots!

3.    Next, it takes experience and technical expertise to have a good command on how to control the volume and pace. To level out volume fluctuations, professional voice actors know that they need to move closer to the microphone when the volume gets softer and farther as the volume gets louder. This will eventually help reduce the amount of compression needed later on.

4.    Coming to the next point, a good artist knows that sibilance is the excessive hissing when producing S’s and F’s sounds and popping is producing extra bursts of air when pronouncing words containing P’s and B’s. While these sounds may go unnoticed in normal conversations, these are painfully obvious while recording and a good voice actor will know the right angle to reduce these traces of unwanted noises.

5.    Lastly, if the voice artist does not know the context behind the message and is unaware about the terminologies, how will he/she breathe life into the content? To produce an engaging Advertisement voice over, voice artists must have a complete idea about what and how to deliver as they are the bridge between your brand and the listeners.

Apart from this, there might be certain parts of your Advertising script that may require a specific tone or accent. You must go ahead, mark your script, use brackets and provide clear instructions to the voice talent. You must remember to keep those emotions and tones very specific, avoiding the too-general terms. To ensure you’re happy with the finished product, take care to describe the “voice” you would like to present. The words you choose should describe the mood, style, and pacing you would like to hear in your finished product. To get an energetic performance while recording, try and give instructions on the basis of emotion, facial expression or body language to clarify how you’d like the recording to be.

Also, always provide a script that’s really ready for recording. This means that you will have to read out your script many times, look for tricky words, marking uncommon names or sentences and removing any grammatical errors.

With more and more advertisement audios and videos appearing in the online space, there is even more intense competition to gain consumer attention and keep viewers hooked. And a professional advertisement voice over can be an effective instrument to reach a wide range of consumers on a massive scale! Remember, that a professional voice over actor will provide you energetic and persuasive recordings with different projections, styles and approaches that will rightly fit your script and Advertising requirement!