Voice overs

There is nothing worse than an advertising voice over. (yes advertisers, we recognize it)

Here’s what it says to the audience:

We don’t care who you are

We don’t care where you’re from

We don’t respect your culture

We think we can stooge you

We think you won’t know the difference

We think all our customers are the same

We talk to you, not with you

To me it makes no sense to be stingy on making a TVC worth $500k when you’re spending over $5m on media. It’s a false economy, especially when the media doesn’t work and it turns off the potential audience you’re trying to persuade.

3 thoughts on “Voice overs

  1. I am not sure I understand your point, Stephen. There are good commercials and bad commercials. Their goodness or badness is generally a function of whether they do their job, not their aesthetics or production values per se.
    Similarly I can’t see that whether or not a commercial uses a voice-over or not is relevant. There have been many successful commercials in which a well written and well performed V/O has been an integral part of making the commercial work. There have been even more where a bad V/O has managed to make a bad commercial worse.
    Again, it is not the existence of a V/O, but how well it is done.
    Finally, as a former advertising copywriter, creative director and latterly an experienced voice-over performer, I would have thought your “message-to-media” cost ratio of 10:1 was a bit on the high side. But such ratios need to be viewed in a broad context: concentration of target audience in the medium’s total coverage for instance.
    In any case, a commercial costs what it takes to make it well. Spend less and you are not making the commercial you need – which is not saying that there is a correlation between a production budget and a commercial’s effectiveness.
    Making an expensive commercial cheaply never works. Making an inexpensive commercial well usually does – providing the writer has done his or her job.
    End of rant.

  2. Thanks for your comments Russell. I appreciate your input. You’ve certainly managed to go deeper on the point than I intended. Thanks.

    A couple of clarifications though – The media ratio refers to my Market – Australia , and is accurate on average.

    The voice overs I refer to are those which are done for ‘talent’ acting in the actual spot – not to a genral VO used with no visual of the person. In this situation it’s relevant.

    Cheers
    Steve

  3. Thanks for the clarifications. Although no longer active in the field I have a continuing interest in advertising, PR, corporate communications and the like. Some items on my blog are relevant. (www.russellc.wordpress.com)

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