Voiceover

So you have a phone message system and instead of having your assistant record your greeting you have decided to use a professional voiceover talent for your greeting, on hold messages, and the rest of your phone tree system. Fantastic! This can be so much fun. Fun? That’s right, that’s what I said, and this is from a gal who does a lot of commercial and radio imaging work. Some of the most clever and snarky scripts I have voiced have been for phone systems, so put on your thinking caps because it is time to get creative!

When hiring a professional voiceover talent for your next telephony job, there is a lot to think about! You want the voice that you select to work in concert with everything else that you identify with your brand. If your brand is warm and welcoming, do not choose a voice that is aloof and mechanical. Instead, select a voice that through its vocal attributes matches the characteristics of your brand. If you want someone to sound welcoming and gracious, they should have representative spots on their telephony or IVR demo. If you are looking for someone to have a corporate and professional sound, they should have samples of that as well.

Casting a multi-faceted talent for your phone stem

There are many advantage to choosing a professional voiceover talent who displays a broad range of skills on her or his demo. For example, if that talent can sound like a conversational millennial, you will be casting a very broad net for potential callers. That talent might be a very safe choice.

If that same talent can also have a more serious, corporate tone to appeal to Baby Boomers and or sophisticated and luxury brands, then you are casting an even broader net with your one voice. It is quite common that all you have to do is request what you are looking for, and your voiceover talent will be able to accommodate multiple styles for you.

Another opportunity for brand awareness

A lot of clients that I have worked with use both their greetings and their on hold messages as a valuable opportunity to promote their brand. For example, I do a lot of on hold messages for Whole Foods markets, particularly the ones in California and Arizona. They use these messages as an opportunity to talk about specials coming up that are related to seasonal changes and approaching holidays. Another company that I do telephony for is called Coastal Business Supply. They use their messages to let folks know about trade shows they will be at and about promotions they are running. They are also using their messages to raise awareness about the quality of their products. INSERT CONCLUSION ABOUT THIS

I think all of the companies that I do telephony for have one common characteristic: their scripts are extremely well written and entertaining. Just like in other forms of advertising, this allows the spot to get the attention of your listener, in this case a client, customer, patient, or colleague, right off the bat. In our new culture of 6 second ads, the fist few seconds of communication are even more vital than ever before and as the voiceover for a Telephony spot, we need to use this opportunity to draw in the person on the other end of the phone.

So, when considering talents for your next telephony spot, you really want to hire a professional voiceover talent who will imprint the message of your brand effectively. The voiceover for a telephony job is as much a part of the advertising team as the commercial voice or the narrator on your website. It all needs to be cohesive and flow together as one unit. Even better when the telephony voice is so excellent that you are giving your caller an audio experience that they enjoy, and not just have to persevere through.

The next time you case a voice for your phone system, think about a person you would most like to hear on the other end of the phone and cast that voice. If you imagine an actual person and not just a set of adjectives that describe a voice, you are far more likely to connect that person with your brand, and then the character that you are really seeking will come into place.

What is the goal of telephony voiceover casting?

When you cast a voice for your phone system, the point is not simply to get people who want to reach you on the phone. If it were you would not spend so much time thinking about branding and the qualities that you want. The actual goal of telephony is to get the people who call to want to work with you. You want them to enjoy the call so much that they are delighted and not pulling their hair out when they come on the line. So please, when casting your next voiceover talent for a phone job, think about what kind of greeting in person makes you feel most welcome and then try to emulate all of that within your phone system.

I admit that this may date me a bit, but as a little girl in the 80s’, one of my favorite parts of the week was watching the Golden Girls on Saturday nights with my sister. Sometimes we watched with our Mommom (that’s Philly speak for Grandma), but typically our parents were out to dinner and our time with Sophia, Blanche, Dorothy, and Rose was the highlight of our evening! When I reminisce about the time spent watching Golden Girls, it’s hard to separate the actors from the parts that they played as we both identified with these characters and adored them.

Building Strong Characters

Now, as a professional voiceover talent, I not only remember the show with nostalgia, but I am inspired by the work as these actresses set the bar high in terms of talent. First, as characters, the savvy and quick-witted women of Miami serve as archetypes of characters. As a character voiceover actress, thinking about what each of these women and their lives represent on a higher level is as meaningful now as it was to me as a child. While I learned so much about life, love, and romance from them then, now I also appreciate what they represent in a new light. For example, Dorothy has dead-pan, stoic sense of humor, strength, and wisdom. But, at the same, time she can also be a martyr and a know-it-all. The way Bea Arthur used her timing and in a single glance could say a thousand words- it was pure brilliance.

As a voiceover talent, it isn’t just their comedic timing that I appreciate, and I really think these actresses nailed it every time, but I also love the word emphasis. Rose’s character is particularly charming. I love the way Betty White delivered the “foreign” words from St. Olaf, Minnesota. She does so with such charm and panache is if they just role off the tongue, and as someone who speaks for a living I can assure you that vertunkenflunken does not just roll off the tongue. As a character actress, I think it isn’t just Rose’s delightful sweet side, her innocent kindness, or her determination to help other’s that I admire in terms of how the character was written, but I think that I really connected with Betty White’s delivery because dialects are so difficult to master and her pacing and word emphasis was always flawless. The result was a lovable and endearing character.

Female Characters that Set the Bar So High!

Understanding the subtext seems to be part of the essence of what these actresses do best. When Sophia starts a sentence with “Picture it, Sicily….” it isn’t just that we know what’s coming, it’s that we know that something so much bigger than what she is really saying is coming. As a professional voiceover talent, understanding subtext is a part of every single read, and the craft of delivering it without the audience even noticing is a brilliant gift that happens throughout each episode of Golden Girls.

Another reason that these actresses give the rest of us so much to live up to is the emotional depth that they build within each character. Perhaps we feel this because Rose, Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia do not just exist as individuals, but they have a group identity that we relate to as well. In my life I have had the priviledge not just of having my sister who I am exceptionally close with and speak to constantly every day and share everything with, but I am also blessed to have very close girl friends. My girl friends are amazing, smart women and on my best days and on my worst days I am so thankful that they are there. In Golden Girls, we see this aspect too. What would Blanche be without Dorothy in her life? Sophia doesn’t just need Dorothy, but she needs Rose and Blanche too. The symbiotic relationship that exists is quite special but is also quite realistic. The actresses who built these characters had so much chemistry.

What’s the takeaway for voiceover?

So how do I bring all of the richness that these brilliant actresses spent years developing in their multi-faceted characters and take that into something that can help me with me and my work?

• First, when I get a script, I always spend so much time thinking about the information that my client has given me and what they are looking for in terms of the read.
• Next, since it is not stage acting and I am not typically in the presence of the other voice actors, I really do need to think about the relationships and how this character fits in. I need to develop the character not just as a voice, but a full fledged being, so that when I step in front of the mic, that presence comes out of me, and with it is a suggestive wink like Dorothy or a flirtatious shake of the hip like Blanche, everyone hears it in my voice.

There are some things you can never get enough of, chocolate for one, and a great program like the Golden Girls!

My kids will often say, “Mom, stop making that face!!!” or “Mom, will you make that other face?” Recently someone asked me if I make faces when I work, especially when I do character work. I don’t have a mirror in my recording studio, but as I make faces all the time, I am positive that I must!

The only professional who ever commented on my faces is Dave Walsh. While what happens in a Dave Walsh coaching session stays in a Dave Walsh coaching session, I think I am allowed to say that when I would scrunch up my face too much he was not pleased and we had to work on that!! The effects of the facials scrunch were coming through in my reads and it was something to work on. When I learned to relax my face, my read was better.

I do a lot of character work. Yes, even when I am doing a telephony or eLearning job I am assuming a character, but when I am actually playing a character like a mermaid in a mobile app or a candy princess in a video game, that is actual character work. When doing that type of acting, especially for toys, my entire body is used and it is really animated. If you don’t move all around and gesture and put physicality into it, then frankly it does not sound great.

I also think the reason I make a lot of faces is that is part of my personality and I cannot hide what I am thinking. That trait, which I think a lot of creatives have, helps very much in voiceover. This does not, however, make me a very good poker player.