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.

Sounds familiar

In recent years, famous actors and television personalities have become synonymous with big brands. Ricky Gervais’ wing-man, Stephen Merchant, now voices Barclays’ advertising campaign, his dulcet Bristol tones bringing a laid-back approach to a multi-national name. Lesser-known actor Simon Greenall, better recognised as Geordie Michael from I’m Alan Partridge, has been revealed as one of the biggest voiceover hits with his Aleksandr the Meerkat voice for comparethemarket.com. While famous names and branding are not a new pairing, in today’s advertising the stress seems to be on the voice as much as it is on the face; possibly even more so.

Celebrity and recognisable voiceovers create a ‘voice brand’ which serves to show just how important voices are becoming to modern business advertising.

The professional pitch

Ensuring your hold messages, auto attendants and answer phone messages all seamlessly reflect your brand is essential for an appropriate and consistent service delivery. Without visuals, far more emphasis is placed on voice, the words your voiceover speaks and how they say them. And while it may seem like Brenda on reception can give your business a ‘personal touch’, as we’ve discussed previously in Mark Griffiths’ breathless post, natural speech utterances rarely sound professional.

Finding your voice

At PH Audio, we recommend clients carefully consider the voice they want to use for their production, making sure that it blends with existing campaigns and additional services like Web Audio. So, if you’re looking to find the right voiceover for your on-hold production, here are some points worth considering:

Appropriateness – does the voice suit your business?

Consistency – is it in keeping with your established advertising and brand values?

Credibility – is the voice believable and professional?

Audience – what do they want and how will that personality translate vocally?

Competitors – what’s already out there and how will your voice be heard above these?

Audio branding for business

There’s a lot to consider when choosing your voiceover and every business has different requirements. Male Corporate would never work for a ladies beauty salon, but could work perfectly for an insurance group or law firm where his voice can instil confidence and trust. Because callers can’t see the person speaking (at least not until technology is developed further), the imagination becomes a key player. Your voice’s personality has to shine through their speech, so the correct levels of conviction have to be employed and different voices will immediately conjure images in your caller’s mind. For many people, Male Corporate will be a successful middle-aged chap in a navy pin-striped suit, while Female Northern Bubbly is a blonde, buxom lass brimming with friendly charm – or maybe that’s just the way we see them?

The audio cream of the crop

At PH Audio, all our voiceovers are familiar voices from TV and radio. They deliver speech for a living so you can be sure that every rhythm, pitch and intonation is carefully considered and produced to your exacting criteria. Working alongside our scriptwriters, our audio production team will help you match the right words to the right voice, so your On-Hold Marketing is always on-brand.

Business Voicemail is all part of the audio branding experience. It’s sometimes the first contact you’ll make with a customer, so it’s crucial you make the right impression every time.

Here at PH Audio, we’re passionate about getting it right for our customers, so we’ve put together a few tips on how to make the most of your Business Voicemail package.

No music, just message

Unlike your telephone On-Hold Marketing production, we advise that a Business Voicemail message shouldn’t have music in the background. The message on your voicemail production needs to have clarity and let the caller know why you can’t answer the phone. After all: they don’t want to listen to a voiceover production with music in the background — they just want to contact you personally.

Don’t use an answering machine

A caller can tell when they’re put through to an answering machine; the production quality isn’t anywhere near as good as a professionally recorded business voicemail greeting and the blandness of the message can put callers off. Much more can be done for you and your business with a personalised message.

Use a lasting message

It’s sometimes the case that employees want to show how organised they are by changing their message each day, and by displaying the date to their callers. But if you forget to change the message, it can easily have the opposite effect. We suggest you only change your message if it’s vital, i.e., if you’re away for a prolonged period of time or the message becomes outdated.

Keep it simple

If your callers struggle to get hold of you time and time again, there’s nothing worse than being caught up in long-winded voicemail greeting. Make it easy for your callers to leave a message and assure them you’ll contact them as soon as it’s convenient.

Keep on top of your mailbox

Don’t let your mailbox get full! Sounds obvious, but it does happen. Make sure you keep on top of the messages left in your inbox; mainly so there’s always room for someone to leave a message — you don’t want to miss any messages from clients.

Add a personal touch to your greeting

Callers are trying to contact you directly, so the likelihood that they know you is high. By adding a personal touch to your greeting, you can give your callers something to smile about and strengthen their views of you and your business. Add a greeting that says something about your character, and do it in a way that reflects well on your business.

Keep the greeting in line with both personal and company branding

Much like adding a personal touch to your greeting, it’s critical that you keep all communications in line with your personal and company branding. For example, corporate branding guidelines may state that you can only use a particular voiceover artist for your productions, or there might be certain words that have to be said when greeting callers.

Make use of a professional Voiceover Artist

Of course, there’s no reason why you can’t record the voicemail greeting yourself, but ask yourself: ‘What does that say about me and my company?’ More importantly, what does a professionally recorded greeting say about you and your company? A professionally produced and scripted greeting can have more impact on your callers and keep them happy even if they can’t get hold of you during your client meetings!

Mark Griffiths, one of PH Audio’s dedicated Sound Producers, offers his take on a small but critical element of voiceover editing.

My job is to take people’s breath away.

I edit voiceovers for a living. One of the main tasks is to remove all the breathing sounds.

Voiceover artists’ voices get compressed in the final mix. This has the effect of making all the quiet parts of speech louder. It’s one of the studio techniques that gives that extra oomph to the voices of radio announcers and pop singers.

But if you compress a voice track with the breaths left in, the breaths are amplified. These noises, which are normally so quiet we don’t notice them in normal speech, are boosted to the same volume as the words.

It makes the speaker sound like the Elephant Man.

So I get rid of them.

I’ve been doing it so long I don’t even need to hear it any more.

Using a digital sound editor like Adobe Audition, you can see the breaths on the screen in front of you. They look like little clouds, floating between the mountain peaks of the words.

Press a key and you can flatten the waveform into silence, evaporate the clouds.  Rob a person of their breath like a goblin in a fairytale.

But instead of choking them, removing their breath makes them stronger. A voiceover track without breaths sounds slick and confident. Somewhere at the back of your mind you’re thinking this announcer is so dynamic they don’t even need to breathe air like a normal person.

A lot of people think they have what it takes to be a professional voiceover artist just because someone once complimented them on their nice voice.  The truth is to make a living at it you also need the vocal precision of an opera singer, the versatility of a character actor and a lot of very expensive kit.

So in short: save your breath.

PH Audio are (queue shameless plug) the on-hold marketing champions throughout Europe, so it goes without saying that we know what we’re doing when it comes to all things on hold.

That said, we do like our clients to be on the ball when choosing music and voiceovers that really represent their brands. And although our Audio Account Managers will make expert recommendations – nobody knows their business as well as the clients themselves.

Music’s effect

No matter what’s happening in our crazy lives, we can always find solace in music. The right melody can change how we feel about something in an instant, so it goes without saying that music (used correctly) in marketing is hugely powerful.

Unless your advertising budget is infinite, you probably won’t be playing Lady Gaga or Take That down the phone to your callers – but this doesn’t mean your music on hold needs to sound like the tinny muzak of yesteryear. That sort of music upsets us at PH, so we’re always coming up with new and exciting tracks that really stand out from the rest.

He can’t pull a rabbit out of a hat, but…

Mike Cooke, our in-house music magician (that’s not really his job title, but it should be), can regularly be found tinkering with his keyboard and twiddling the knobs on his virtual mixing desk – all in the name of adding new and exciting melodies to our library of royalty-free on hold music.

Mike’s creations can be found on the website; there’s a host of styles, genres and tempos that do anything BUT uninspire those waiting on hold.

How do you choose your voice and music on hold?

The most important thing to remember when deciding on music and voice is to make your selection based on what your callers will want to hear (and not your own personal tastes). How old is your average caller? What’s your average hold time? What’s your industry? What kind of message are you trying to portray?

The answers to these questions are paramount to picking the best music on hold track for your business. And if you don’t think any of our tracks are befitting to your brand, you can always have your own exclusive track produced for a fraction of the cost of licensed music.

Voice your opinion

Choosing the right voiceover needs a similar approach. If you’re a young, vibrant company with a quirky marketing strategy, then an older and more mature voice probably won’t fit your brand. Likewise if you’re in a legal or highly corporate field, a spritely, youthful voice mightn’t help build trust in your service. The voice must be spot on to have maximum effect – imagine, if you’re familiar with it, Channel Four’s Come Dine With Me without Voiceover Dave Lamb. Doesn’t work, does it?

The right voice gives your audio brand its own personality. Its own identity. Our voiceovers are all picked from the world of TV and radio; many have provided the voice to some highly recognisable brand campaigns, and some have enjoyed roles in top TV shows. Suffice to say, our talking heroes are top-notch and can handle highly corporate scripts as easily and effectively as a humorous, comedy production.

So when you next find yourself listening to your own on-hold message, pay particular attention to the voice and music – a highly effective on-hold production relies heavily on the suitability of both.

Are you making the most of your audio brand?

Photo credit: takomabibelot @ flickr

Did he eat, shoot or leave?

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!

Say again?

Here’s an example of what can happen when a script is missing the right punctuation mark:

Copywriting tips for audio and voiceover scripts

1. The first rule of audio copywriting is: be thorough! But what else do scriptwriters need to think about? Here are some other grammar, punctuation and formatting hints you might want to think about if you’re writing for audio.

2. Bluntly, voiceovers read what’s in front of them. This means it’s a good idea to make things easy to read – so first up, you should space those lines, remove hyphenated line-breaks and ensure strange words or product names have direction for pronunciation.

3. Don’t use abbreviations. A policeman wouldn’t tell you off for driving at 90 MPH. They’d say, ‘You’re naughty – don’t travel at ninety miles-an-hour.’ And if you do need to use acronyms, symbols or abbreviations, make sure they’re spelled out. Use ‘percent’ instead of a % sign. Use ‘and’ instead of an ampersand (&).

4. Use contractions – try you’re instead of you are; we’re instead of we are. This makes audio prompts sound a lot more like natural speech.

5. Justified text is very hard to process. Use default left-aligned text, as this won’t squash long phrases or overly space short ones.

6. If you’re marking a pause, use a full stop or a dash. Certain conventions for written material – like ellipses or semi-colons – often don’t translate well to voice, causing unnecessary pauses and potential confusion.

7. Beware lists. (Unless they’re lists like this one!) A long sentence can carry a lot of information, but without a break, a voiceover artist is going to run out of breath and/or rush through the details. By using more full stops, you’ll save valuable seconds, strengthen the message and avoid the temptation to fluff up a point you could make in fewer words.

Got any extra tips? Leave a comment and let us know.

Interview with the voiceover

Star of Hollyoaks, Coronation Street, Doctors, Dream Team, Waterloo Road and more, as well as numerous stage plays and radio productions, Martine Brown voices PH Audio campaigns and was recently the face of PC World’s TV campaign.  We’re delighted to find out who’s behind one of our star ‘Voices’ – welcome Martine…

Readers will know you from your regular appearances on television, is the schedule as gruelling as people say it is?

Yes, definitely. It’s great, I love it but you don’t have a life outside of it when you’re working. Hollyoaks included lots of night shoots so there was no time for a social life for a few years. Now I have a little boy who’s three and a half so I don’t have a social life now either! I’ve deliberately stayed away from TV and theatre work since Harry was born which has also allowed me to do more voiceover work.

Is that how you got into voiceover work?

I’ve always done voiceover work. I used to do radio commercials and have a lot of voiceover experience. I remember recording a CD-Rom for HMS Ark Royal, it was so technical that I had no idea what some of it meant! But that doesn’t matter when you’re doing voiceover, it’s how you portray the information that counts and the people listening to it will understand it, even if I don’t always.

How do you prepare for reading a PH Audio script?

When I’m recording a PH Audio script, I get a feel for what the company is like and the image they have and I try to portray that with my voice. When I’m recording on-hold messaging I know that I might be the first voice the customer is hearing so it’s vital to create the right impression of the company. I try to add something to every script and always try and understand the type of company’s image by reading the script carefully. I can then convey that image in my style of reading it. I’ve done a lot of radio and voiceover work in the past so I understand how important the voice is in the final production.

When you’re not working, how do you relax?

Having a three year old, I don’t! Running around after him takes up all my time but it’s wonderful. On the odd occasion I’m awake after his bedtime, I’m partial to a drop of red wine, I’ve always been a red wine girl!

What would you do if he wanted to go into acting?

I would support him but he’d be going into it fully aware of how tough it can be. It can be hard and you can have great times and then equally tough times, it’s a fantastic job but it’s also tough. But if it’s what you want to do, you have to try.

If you suddenly lost your voice, what would you do for a living?

I don’t think there’s anything else I can do! I’ve always thought it would be really nice to deliver flowers. Seeing the look on someone’s face when you present them with a huge bunch of flowers that they weren’t expecting would be great! And I wouldn’t need to say anything so it wouldn’t matter if I lost my voice. Otherwise, something creative. Maybe I’d have a go at writing, who knows?

Thanks Martine!