• Blog
  • Voice Acting
  • Understanding the Role of Voice Over in Advertising and Beyond
Voice Acting

Understanding the Role of Voice Over in Advertising and Beyond

Tara Parachuk | March 21, 2016

Understanding the Role of Voice-Over in Advertising and Beyond | Voices.com Blog - Where clients and voice actors can find valuable information on pre-production, technology, animation, video and audio production, home recording studios, business growth, voice acting and auditions, celebrity voice actors, voiceover industry news and more!

What’s worth reading (or hearing) these days? From announcing new graduates to the world to the workaday voice artist plugging away in their home studio recording literally hundreds of voice prompts for a telephony project, it would seem that the spoken word is happening everywhere. Where are voices reaching you?

Be sure to comment with your thoughts in today’s Vox Daily!

Voices in the Everyday

Hearing voices in the grocery store? At the gas station? In home automation?
Whether it’s strictly for entertainment, to promote education or for the saving of many lives, the role of voice over in advertising continues to grow and thrive in a world where new opportunities for voice are created on a regular basis.

Voice continues to thrive in traditional markets, and as new forms of advertising emerge, so do more opportunities for marketers to capitalize on their creativity.

Remember when pre-roll ads began appearing on YouTube videos? How about Apple’s decision to feature App preview videos? Those days were not so long ago!

Some of the Hottest Markets for Using Voice Include:

  • Mobile
  • Voice-activated technologies
  • Audiobooks
  • Interactive/Gaming

Making Technology More Human

People have always loved creating a human connection with technology. Whether we’re making the tech more personable or simply making it easier for humans to interact with it, we seem to find a way to imbue our human characteristics into machines (like Computer in Star Trek) in order to better communicate.

The human voice is unique. Each one of us has own own voiceprint and way of engaging with a text. How we understand a text depends on how we see the world. Each word that we speak has an impact, be it positive or negative. The way a voice artist interprets your text will either serve your purpose or deviate from it. There really isn’t a middle ground where words are concerned.
The voice you pick to narrate your script may make or break your ad campaign!

Voices Enable Connection

Spoken word performances remind us that the written word is part of our daily lives. Whether we’re proofing an email for tone or providing a line read in a directed session, we’re interacting with text and finding ways to make it more interesting, meaningful and palatable to the audience meant to hear the message.
That’s exactly what a voice-over is meant to do.
A couple years ago, TD Bank created a Thank You video that captured how they said “Thank You” to some of their customers. This is one of my personal favorites. Take a look at how the human voice (live spoken word) made an enormous difference and connection.

How About You?

What sort of things do you listen for when reviewing auditions? Alternatively, if you are the one auditioning, how do you approach a script?
Let me know!
Take care,
Stephanie
P.S. If you’d like to post a job to audition voice actors, here’s a link. We’re here to help!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *