The Voice Within
p.s: nothing about Christina Aguilera.
Hype or game-changer? Clubhouse, an exclusive IOS chat group app downloads reached 8.1 million globally in just over 2 weeks. Apparently Facebook is now pulling their socks up to stay in the game. A cross between webinar and podcast, many brands jumped on the bandwagon to directly learn what truly matters to customers. Although it provides potential opportunities for celebrities and high profile venture capitalists to interact with fans, security concerns over user data have been raised. Hearing from people in real time do have an appeal but at a price, just like any other curated marketing messages.
Speech is vital in communicating ideas, emotions and personalities. Akin to fingerprint, every human voice is unique and personal. According to Albert Mehrabian’s 7–38–55 rule, 38% of the meaning is communicated through the tone of voice. Though an accommodating articulation may suggest collaboration, an assertive one helps build trust and earn respect during negotiation. The recent lockdown intensifies our engagement with the spoken word, building invisible connections as we command, soothe, leave oral memos and entertain others like beatboxing. Yes, even Lego has a part.
We often cringe at how different our recorded audio turned out from what we internally expected. In fact #youarewelcome, the 6 common types are bass, baritone, tenor, alto, mezzo-soprano and soprano. Like Donald Trump was once polled to have the most annoying voice by the British. High-pitched women are favored by men because they convey a smaller body frame. If you do not like the way you sound, consider surgical solutions, vocal coaches or simply live with it. However there is no perfect vocal range to please everyone. We are all talents in our own ways. There could only be this many radio artistes, voice-over actors, singers and speech language pathologists. So i say let’s appreciate diversity and be less critical of ourselves.
Thanks to my sister, ‘’The Little Prince’’ was my very first read-along book during childhood. I remembered how I always look forward to envisioning the story as characters came alive one by one while footsteps, far away conversations between groups of passer-bys played in the background. No blue-light filters or internet required, only a tad more imagination to create magic in the mind.
Fast forward to today, time-poor listeners are spoilt for choice. I once shared that voice searches and conversational marketing with website visitors through chatbots using natural language processing (NLP) are ways to sound out interest and generate leads. The podcast industry continues to grow more advertising dollars than ever. Already Google Assistant has provided so much ease and convenience for Walmart shoppers! With artificial intelligence and the internet of things, there is efficiency through reduced typing / button clicking. Sexy and practical.
Voice technology is relatively new but promising. Yet users worry about hacking, eavesdropping and return-on-investment tracking metrics. Some questioned the gender bias found in personal assistant bots. What about robocalls flooding your mobile phone, you added? Because technology enabled ‘’imitation of life’’, scammers at large often made millions of calls to cheat victims of money at very low cost. It is best to ignore calls from unfamiliar numbers. Brands need to test and learn more to drive real business results in the long run. It is thus important to know the target audience or whether content is contextually relevant enough to users. For instance, Spotify identified opportunities to engage people at home and teamed up with Nars on a voice-activated sampling campaign during the coronavirus pandemic.
With so little time and so much to do, people feel the urge to storytell more. Social audio has sparked renewed interest and will continue to be for a while. If not, there is always music or words on hand.
