Voice Over Brand Personas - VoiceArchive

“We are looking for a voice that says quality but affordable.”

“We want a voice that sounds like the person in this picture.”

“Can we have a voice that stimulates our campaign’s “feeling”?”

 

Vague as they may sound, these inquiries are as common as that second cup of coffee at work! And experience is key when it comes to complicated requests.

Drawing from our expertise enables us to create personas that will help us track down the one voice talent that compliments your branded voice-over and brand’s values.

Visuals are your “eye contact”, but a voice can deeply connect!

When “flirting” with your future customers your visuals make the first “eye contact”, but it is your voice that deeply communicates, seduces the audience, and – finally – seals the deal.

Having a voice talent aligned with your brand is what sets a brand apart from the competition; it is that little something extra that makes the big difference in a campaign and creates that deep connection with the audience. It is what is sought after by every single “big shark” of the industry. Read on, get inspiration and useful insides from some of the most famous case studies.

Insider's secrets

Energy Industry

A robots voice

One of our biggest clients in the energy industry wanted to voice the different characters of an employee training series. Our partners were well prepared, they already had a clear idea of how each character would be. For example, one of the avatars was inspired in Hitchhiker’s Marvin – a pacifist and brilliant, but chronically depressed robot. Being an inventory of the spaceship has got the order to assist another avatar, in learning how to navigate the system. But his motivation is below zero. As a result, they requested a voice talent with a very specific tonality: sarcastic but depressive tone.

Frederik Hansen, VoiceArchive’s Key Account Manager responsible for this project explained:

“When we work with personas the key is preparation. The better the client has prepared, the faster and more successful the result is! Quality preparation saves time and costly resources from our partners!”

Internet Industry

Preparation is key

Another client of ours, a leading tech company, came to us really prepared. Apart from having a complete image of how their ideal brand voice should sound, they provided a brand book including information and argumentation on every part of their request, from the voice to all linguistic attributes.

For example, the branded voice is that of a reliable human, the voice must convey that the person behind that voice wants to provide information fast and accurately. As a result, the voice should use short forms like “outta”, “getta” or “wanna”.
This way, the voice sounds willing to save you every second of your time! Touches like this one on the audition script enabled the voice to showcase brand values without even describing them.

Gaming

A lot of voices!

Gaming projects can be highly demanding as well. Working on such a project we were asked to provide 66 different voices based on the game’s story. We joined forces with the gaming company, analysing themes, ideas, storyline, and characters.
Our experiences really helped us navigate through our huge voice pool, performing multiple matchings having a strict deadline. We rolled our sleeves and hit the ground running, and the result paid off!

Brand-specific examples

The Walt Disney Company

“Dream, diversify, and never miss an angle.” This is the famous formula of success that Walt Disney revealed in The Wall Street Journal in 1958.

And Disney never misses an angle. In 2020, Disney Advertising Sales and Translation LLC began negotiations on a partnership to develop multilingual advertisements with greater, more organic multicultural reach.

“Ultimately, we were in a place where we knew creative storytelling mattered, but we also wanted to be able to scale it across audiences and scale the expertise with people who had experience with brands on how to make culturally relevant creative stand out in the media business,” says President of Disney Advertising Sales Rita Ferro. “Disney has scale and brands that matter. We wanted to take that as a foundational platform and use the best brand partnerships—like we did with Steve and Translation on State Farm, and what we did with CreativeWorks with Ford—to create moments that stand out and drive brands’ business.”

Walt Disney’s formula proved to be quite successful. Disney hit the ground running with its new platform, Disney Plus, in 2019. The platform has already surpassed 100 million in less than two years, overachieving the company’s initial promise to Wall Street, for 60-90 million subscribers worldwide by 2024.

Coca-Cola

A friendly voice

Coca-cola is king when it comes to brand storytelling. The company’s Christmas adverts have known significant global success since their creation in 1995, and they are met with great anticipation every year. To the sound of the slogan – “Taste the feeling” or “Share a Coke” for example – you can feel this happy, relaxed, and warm feelings of friendship filling you up. From 1971 till today, every character (or singer) voice selected is a voice is always contemporary and reflects these feelings of “friendly”, relaxing, happiness.

So let’s wrap this up

Accent, voice type, age, sex, audience, native language, and cultural background are only some of our decision-making factors, when voicing brands. For this, communication with the client and the intuition that derives from years of experience in the industry has a significant role to play.

Consistently betting on ourselves, we have developed a pattern of understanding what your brand means. Providing exclusive tools like our Voice Selector or the Live Sessions we can provide you with fast, high-quality voice-overs while guaranteeing your creative input. The first time, every time!

Would you like tailored advice for your next project?

When it comes to your next branded campaign, remember that consistency is key. So, achieve visual and verbal consistency with the talent that aligns with your branding. 

Get in touch with our voice-over professionals for a free consultation. Just contact us with a brief on your inquiry, we will dive into our database and find the perfect voice for you – and if we don’t have it, we will find it!

Looking for your next voice-over?

We’d like to help.

Anna Sticken

Global Key Account Manager