0118 – How Advertisers Use Accents To Sell Us Stuff

0118 – How Advertisers Use Accents To Sell Us Stuff

VOICE BOX

Marketers know exactly how to manipulate our feeling towards different accents. Call-centre switchboards are so sophisticated that they often route calls from different geographical locations or from customers with specific enquiries, to operatives with certain accents.

So a bank customer from Alabama might get an adviser with a similar Southern accent, even though the call centre may be at the other end of the country. That’s if they are after a loan and the bank wants to appear friendly and helpful. If they’ve defaulted then a staff member with an accent that’s perceived as more aggressive, perhaps one from New York, may handle the call.

A study in the UK[1] found some people, for example in Manchester, like hearing adverts in their own accent, while in cities such as Bristol or Birmingham they prefer voice-overs who speak with a south-east England accent.

The 15 most trustworthy accents in the UK: https://www.countryliving.com/uk/news/a34435560/most-trustworthy-accent-uk/

The effects of accents on trustworthiness and overall credibility. (Video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSp9ghRymgk&feature=youtu.be

1943: Should a woman or even a Yorkshireman be allowed to read the BBC news? No chance... https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/997887608330928128 and https://twitter.com/BBCArchive/status/998506068669059072

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/may/13/birmingham-bristol-accents-advertising-government

Through these under-5-minute episodes, you can build your confidence and competence with advice on breathing and reading, inflection and projection, the roles played by better scripting and better sitting, mic techniques and voice care tips... with exercises and anecdotes from a career spent in TV and radio studios.

And as themes develop over the weeks (that is, they are not random topics day-by-day), this is a free, course to help you GET A BETTER BROADCAST, PODCAST AND VIDEO VOICE.

Look out for more details of the book during 2021.

Contacts: https://linktr.ee/Peter_Stewart

Peter has been around voice and audio all his working life and has trained hundreds of broadcasters in all styles of radio from pop music stations such as Capital FM and BBC Radio 1 to Heart FM, the classical music station BBC Radio 3 and regional BBC stations. He’s trained news presenters on regional TV, the BBC News Channel and on flagship programmes such as the BBC’s Panorama. Other trainees have been music presenters, breakfast show hosts, travel news presenters and voice-over artists.

He has written a number of books on audio and video presentation and production (“Essential Radio Journalism”, “JournoLists”, two editions of “Essential Radio Skills” and three editions of “Broadcast Journalism”) and has written on voice and presentation skills in the BBC’s in-house newspaper “Ariel”.

Peter has presented hundreds of radio shows (you may have heard him on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4, Virgin Radio or Kiss, as well as BBC regional radio) with formats as diverse as music-presentation, interview shows, ‘special’ programmes for elections and budgets, live outside broadcasts and commentaries and even the occasional sports, gardening and dedication programmes. He has read several thousand news bulletins, and hosted nearly 2,000 podcast episodes, and is a vocal image consultant advising in all aspects of voice and speech training for presenters on radio and TV, podcasts and YouTube, voiceovers and videocalls.

The podcast title refers to those who may wish to change their speaking voice in some way. It is not a suggestion that anyone should, or be pressured into needing to. We love accents and dialects, and are well aware that how we speak changes over time. The key is: is your voice successfully communicating your message, so it is being understood (and potentially being acted upon) by your target audience?

This podcast is London-based and examples are spoken in the RP (Received Pronunciation) / standard-English / BBC English pronunciation, although invariably applicable to other languages, accents and dialects.

Music credits:

"Bleeping Demo" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/7012-bleeping-demo

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

"Beauty Flow" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5025-beauty-flow

License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

"Envision" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)