SOUND; Ka-ching! Audio makes the cash register sing

AdMedia,  Feb 17, 2006  by Donna Werbner, Steven Shaw

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It might have worked for Simon & Garfunkel, but when it comes to advertising, the sound of silence is the noise of nightmares. The moment the viewer hits that mute button ad execs everywhere can hear it: the sound of thousands of dollars being flushed down the toilet. You might as well show the customer a blank screen and put the entire commercial out of its misery. Without audio, it's dead already.

"Sound is a lot more powerful than images," says Consortium's Darryl Parsons. "You can change what images say to the brain by changing the sound because subconsiously people pay a lot of attention to what they hear. They might think they remember an ad because of the images, but insert a different soundtrack or voiceover and they'd forget it."

Take the famous Playstation Mountain tvc (download it at www.nz.playstation.com/news/mountain_ad_wins_at_cannes.jhtml To illustrate the product's Fun, Anyone? tagline, a crowd of people rush to create a skyscraper-high mountain of bodies so that they can have "fun" diving off the top.

The soundtrack is a piece of 1930s gospel music by Shirley Temple - a song its target youth audience would not normally listen to. This clever manipulation of sound subtly leads the audience to expect a very different ad. Indeed, if Sony and TBWA had been less confident about Playstation's appeal, they might have chosen a safer, more familiar soundtrack. But because the target audience isn't given any audio clues about the product being advertised, the final revelation of the tagline creates an in-joke about computer games that is both dramatic and captivating.

The ad won a Grand Prix at the Cannes Advertising Festival; the consensus among judges was that it featured "extraordinary use of music".

There are signs that the trend to use "wrong" or unusual sounds in this way is increasing. More and more agency creatives are discovering that a surprising juxtaposition between a tvc's visual and audio messages will ensure an ad gets noticed. Sound is finally starting to get the recognition it deserves - on the creative strategy side, at least.

The same does not apply, unfortunately, when it comes to investment. Sound is so subtle that many viewers are not aware they are being influenced by it; they simply feel more involved in the ad than usual.

This subtlety is audio's biggest strength. But it is also its biggest weakness. Because consumers often aren't aware of their response to the sounds chosen, advertisers aren't either; it's difficult to measure and is usually under-estimated in favour of the ad's more obvious visual impact.

And so, investment-wise, images hog the spotlight. Clients are prepared to pay through the nose for skilled editors, directors, cameramen, actors and top-of-the-range visual equipment. Voiceover talent and sound technicians, meanwhile, can play second fiddle.

"Sound often gets relegated to something that's stuck on the end of the ad to tidy it up," says Parsons. "It's treated as the poor cousin to images."

Poor being the operative word. "Many voiceover artists are being forced to work for very low fees and rates for voiceovers have gone down in real terms over the past decade," says Ian Hughes from Bigmouth Voices.

At the same time, professional standards and expectations have gone up."A lot of voiceover artists are now actors as well," says Hughes.

Why? Because, over the past five years, advertising voice quality requirements have changed from the "articulated, modulated" tones of the classic radio voices to the more colloquial and idiosyncratic accents of "the natural Kiwi guy and girl", explain Johnson & Laird's Imogen Johnson, and her friend & associate, Liana Piranha from Piranha Talent (both Piranha and J&L are voice talent agencies).

"Voiceover talent now needs to have the ability to improvise and act out real-life scenarios," Johnson says.

To meet this growing demand for voices to sound spontaneous and natural, Parsons will often take away a script from a voiceover artist before the ad is recorded.

"I make them do it from memory because it removes the polish," he says. "My commercial for 42 Below came out better than the script I wrote because the voiceover guy ad-libbed lines - I'd taken away the script and he couldn't remember it."

When voiceover artists and agents are given the chance to contribute to the creative process, the result can be a much better product, agrees Hughes.

"We understand how to take a script and lift it off the page," he explains. "The right voiceover can have a huge impact, providing the full stop that nails the ad and ensuring the TV viewer or radio listener goes away with the right feeling."

With so much at stake, finding the right voiceover is much more of a priority for ad agencies than it used to be. And when demand outstrips supply - well, it's obvious the story won't have a happy ending.

"Many of the new breed of voice talent are at the very top of the acting field, Johnson says. "Inevitably, they expect higher fees and better conditions, such as rollovers, which are automatic for actors."