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Making Your Brand Sound Better

How your brand sounds matters a lot more since digital selling and online interaction became the norm. Even the audio quality of routine online meetings can leave a lasting impression (which is why you should use a decent microphone).

For sales and marketing videos, voice actors make a big difference — which is why the best professionals are well paid for voiceover work. But now that AI voices have been trained to mimic human intonations and pauses, they can help brands improve the quality and quantity of lots of different types of audiovisual productions

Tutorials, Webinars and Demos

We all know that people generally learn more easily by seeing and hearing than by reading text. But it takes a lot of work to make a video about, say, how something works or what makes it different. Once you’ve recorded a video script, it’s not easy to change — even if the voice is that of one of your own subject matter experts.

AI voices, on the other hand, are tireless and always ready to record a professional-sounding version of your new script that you can download immediately. You can even use different voices for different audiences or different product lines.

Here are a few ways companies are using AI voices for applications and services.

E-learning

E-learning companies are one of biggest users of AI voices. It’s not hard to see why. There’s no end to the number of things people need to know which can be more easily learned if they are capably narrated.

Healthcare

Patients often find healthcare information delivered by their physicians to be stress-inducing and difficult to retain. Deliberate and immersive audiovisual    presentations — affordably generated with AI voices — can help patients better evaluate their options.

Prototyping and rehearsing

I used to record scripts for our explainer videos myself — to check the pace, length, and style; and to assist the animators. Every edit required a new recording; I sounded increasingly flat with each iteration. AI voices aren’t as good as seasoned professionals. But they sound better than I do, and they don’t get bored.

Where to Learn More

Amazon and Google have text-to-speech tools you can try. Microsoft’s Azure lets you copy and paste your script into their publicly available converter to hear your script read back.

WellSaid Labs lets you try out their advanced voice generator. The company recruits professional voice actors to make hours of recordings from which their AI builds “voice avatars.”  Some avatars are created to perform scripts in distinctive styles — such as, Mexican American, non-binary, or Western U.S. male. The free trial lets you work with different voices and try out the tools for correcting pronunciations and intonation.

Worth a look.

 

Bruce McKenzie

A writer with a background in public broadcasting and corporate marketing communications, Bruce McKenzie pioneered the “2-Minute Explainer®” brand video for technology businesses in 2004. Customers have included numerous enterprise technology companies (Cisco, IBM, BMC, Brocade/Broadcom, Software AG, CA Technologies, CompuCom) as well as B2B startups. Rebranded “Technology Business Video” in 2017, the company today produces a variety of “tactical” videos to reach buying team members throughout the sales cycle. We take everything marketers want to say and transform it into short videos that communicate stuff buyers want to know. It’s basically what good writers do, made visual. Visit www.techbizvideo.com to learn more or set up a chat about tactical videos with the Technology Business Video professionals.

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