As one of PH Audio’s dedicated audio producers, Mark Griffiths spends his days making client productions sound the way they should. But by night, he’s a hugely talented scriptwriter and novelist – and for his efforts he recently landed a publishing deal for his debut novel with Simon & Schuster.
In this post, Matt catches up with Mark to learn about the book and find out how he’s juggled the sound of words with writing them.
Hold messages have a bad rep in some quarters. When you listen to the worst examples of music on hold, you can see why.
Sound quality. Music choice. Voice choice. All of these things can make or break an on-hold experience. But something that’s sometimes overlooked is the script. And more specifically, clichés.
In this post, we’re looking at how an overused phrase with good intentions can actually have the wrong effect.
Where television and online advertising offer layers of stimulus – colour, sound, movement, logos – a telephone advert engages with fewer senses, but is no less complex.
In this post we’re looking at the impact of an on-brand audio voiceover; one that embodies your business and its beliefs perfectly.
You’ve heard it all before:
We need blue-sky thinking. I’m talking about pushing the envelope, going forward, let’s touch base soon.
Translation: corporate waffle that, in reality, could be said in half the words. Just another way to say, “We need big ideas, so give me a call”.
Anyone who watched Heston Blumenthal’s attempt to resurrect Little Chef last year will no doubt remember the chief executive’s constant wittering about ‘blue-sky thinking’. The phrase alone is irritating, but when used in the context of menus and motorway services, it simply became absurd. You can watch the evidence here.
Finished cringeing?
Well, in this post, we’re looking at why these kind of phrases have no place in external communications.
It doesn’t feel like 13 years ago that we produced and installed our first production – time flies.
Quarter of a million productions later and every aspect of our service bears little resemblance to the processes I’d dug out of the ground back then. Voicing, music, installation, playback equipment and service levels are in a different stratosphere to those bygone days.
But that’s business for you – necessity is the mother – and these advances mean we’ve consistently evolved and improved. What was quite good then is quite brilliant today, which leads me nicely on to the aspect I think has changed the least noticeably but most significantly. That is: what the messages say or, as we say in the trade, the scripts.
Last week we had a look at the benefits of brevity in effective hold music messages. This week, we’re looking at the role of grammar and punctuation in audio copywriting – and how a slip-up can change meaning in a big way.
When we write audio prompts, we’re writing to be read aloud. But that doesn’t mean we can ignore the conventions of prose or the kind of grammar that turns PR fluff into a stonking, high-impact press release. That’s because, in many ways, a company’s successful on-hold messaging is built on the same blocks as a good story – if the grammar, punctuation and spelling is spot-on, you won’t even notice it. The caller won’t be distracted; your message won’t be lost.
That’s not to say you need to be perfect, of course. But not paying attention to grammar can change a lot, inadvertently loading a simple statement with innuendo… or worse. Get copywriting tips after the jump!
Picture credit: sooperkuh @ flickrSomething we wrestle with on the PH Media copywriting team is how things are said. Not so much pronounced – although the odd company name might throw us – but written to be said. We write scripts for our professional voiceovers to read aloud, which means thinking about more than the rhythm of speech and the balance of a sentence.
And, because the difference between what’s on paper and what’s spoken can often be larger than we realise, we know a few things about what works – and what doesn’t.
After recently discovering the Many Eyes website, we thought we’d give you an insight into the uses of this fascinating tool. The application aims to bring on a new meaning to visual interpretation of data within today’s social environment. It’s hoped that by democratising these visualisations of data-sets, we can find patterns and insight; analysis on a social level.