*deepfakes on paper*

🎵 this is the voice

Normal people have wishlists like:

• Get a dog

• Bungee jump

• Selfie with great pyramids

• Marry exotic bilingual stranger that will teach me about fine wines

• Invent a food dish? (sorry, I’m really scrambling now)

Obviously, I have no experience with a normal person’s brain. Keep that between us.

For at least a year, I’ve been busting to learn about voice.

Voice on paper.

I know. Exciting.

Basically, it is the “science” of making words sound like they belong to a certain person or entity. The same way that a logo makes you go “oh this thing belongs to that brand”, but with words.

Finally, despite publicly promising on a live podcast to 50k listeners that I would hit pause on my course addiction, I jumped in. The need for knowledge has to be as addictive as cocaine…

The podcast wasn’t mine — I’m far too scared to make my words audible because I grew up in a country town and you’d hear that I can’t differentiate between Paul/pool/pull/pill. This is a real problem, as stressed to me by a past singing teacher:

YOU’RE SAYING EAGLE WRONG! HIGHER THAN AN EEE GAL! NOT EEE GAWL! GET OUT OF MY STUDIO IF YOU CAN’T TALK HUMAN

I don’t suck at writing different voices, most of the trouble has come when dull, dishwater, PC brands ask me to jazz up their copy… and then beg me to tone it down. Listen, Janice, that WAS toned down.

There is no vaccine against mundanity, sigh.

But when a project with a startup (see the samples here) stalled because they wanted “funny” but one of the founders couldn’t articulate exactly what, and I didn’t have in-depth voice training to help them uncover those details — I knew it was time to apply more math to my words.

This training goes so deep we can chart any voice or brand using data and start imitating it. And make it sound human, not bot.

This means a brand can outsource to a writer trained in voice, and feel like they’re looking in a mirror. Or… stalked? Anyway, no more “it just doesn’t sound like us”.

Some of the training isn’t PC which makes me feel like a marketing rebel, such a rush.

But the first thing they mentioned made me smile… “write the way you speak”.

Well *twirls hair* you don’t say!

But I’ll leave it again here for anyone else writing marketing stuff.

Yeah, a bit harder when you’re marketing a big “corporate” brand without a face, I know, I know.

I’ll be back later with detailed tips on that… but for now, at least try to sound like a human, even if it isn’t you. I’ll even let you say Eagle wrong 😥

Ave,

Berna.