Speech Technology Magazine Blog » That Was SO Ten Years Ago

There are trends in voice-over work, whether you’re talking about the style of announcer you  hear on a TV ad, the type of telephone voice,  or even the kind of approach you might hear from a DJ on the  radio.  The mood or feel created by a voice is an important stylistic element to consider when hiring a voice, and these trends are as variable and as prone to whim as hemlines.

What voices end up sounding dated? Why is it that we can watch a documentary and come to the conclusion that the announcer is old school? Or that we have to change the radio station because the DJ sounds too much like the ones you remember from your childhood when you were trying to tape your songs off the radio without his booming tones overlapping onto your song? (Man, am I old?)

I firmly believe there are trends in voice-over that, just like fashion, can be cyclical and are never definitive (or permanent). You must be sensitive to  fine changes in the market and adjust your performance accordingly, whether you are a voice talent looking to keep your demo current or are in the position of hiring voice talent or writing ad campaigns that require a voice-over component.

Here are the major pitfalls that will give your sound away as being “dated,” just as sure as bell-bottoms or leisure suits:

Shouting. I, and most other professional voice talent, dread copy that dictates that we scream. In addition to being a huge waste of energy and an actual detriment to the voice, that trend of advertising went out long, long ago. Ad agencies long ago figured out that nobody responds well  to being shouted at; a constant barrage of noise actually makes listeners reach a saturation point, and certainly does not compel them to take their wallets out. It could be argued that it’s the only way to fill the stands for a monster truck and tractor pull, but for almost any other product, keep in mind that nobody enjoys being assaulted about the ears.

“The Earbug.” There’s a topical headache remedy applied directly to the forehead—you know the one—and the signature aspect of its ad campaign since its inception has been a very monotonous and irritating tag-line being repeated again and again throughout the ad, until you find it rolling around in your head for hours afterwards. Many advertising analysts might call that a win: after all, the ad is memorable, the tag line is unforgettable, and  you can remember the product’s name. I call it complete disaster, an ad series that doesn’t care about finesse or creatively getting the message across. Instead, it’s planting an earbug in your head and gives you no choice but to repeat it and remember it. That makes me and many others deliberately not buy the product because doing so would be rewarding the people who drove me so crazy.

“Gary Owens” Syndrome. Everyone watched recently with great interest as Ted Williams, a  homeless man, was “discovered” panhandling. He gained a following for some amazing velvet pipes as he thanked a donor; was later videotaped by the same benefactor, who uploaded the video onto You Tube; was featured on CNN; and now is fielding offers from radio stations, sports affiliates, and various other media contacts, taken with his amazing story and—let’s be honest—looking to capitalize on the publicity. My first thought when watching him demonstrate his amazing announcing skills was one of cautious congratulations. I, like everyone else, wished him well and hoped for the best. But I was also stricken with a certain “dated” aspect to his DJ style: he was doing the traditional velvet-throated, classic DJ—all bravado and cigarette-enhanced bass tones that, quite frankly,  just aren’t done anymore. Like the stereotypical announcer Gary Owens on Laugh-In, with hand cupping the ear and the elevated, unnatural, stilted DJ style oozing out. DJs are now—and have been for awhile—displaying a more natural, personable everyman persona. Addiction problems aside, was Mr. Williams’ dated delivery the source of not going further in his broadcasting career? Was it a moving part in his demise that he couldn’t get out of “DJ Head”?

Telephone Automaton. With the lion’s share of my work being in the area of voicing telephone  prompts, I can tell you that even that area is not immune to trends. Years ago, the preferred style was an emotionless android who had no appreciable ups or downs in inflection. This was to accommodate even and seamless concatenation of prompts. We now know that if a voice talent were to voice strings of related prompts, such as numbers, months, or days of the week, with a mind to doing them in an “up-ending” inflection, “down-ending” inflection, and yet another set delivered fairly neutrally, almost all eventualities would be covered. Prompts can then be delivered in a candid, conversational tone (much preferred in modern IVRs), and the robot sound can be avoided.

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Allison Smith is a professional telephone voice, having voiced platforms for Sprint, Verizon, Qwest, Cingular, Bell Canada, Vonage, Twitterfone, Hawaiian Telcom, and the Asterisk Open-Source PBX. Her Web site is www.theivrvoice.com.

via speechtechblog.com