The right tone to suit your brand
Before you start looking for a voice, it’s crucial to know exactly what you want to convey. After all, a voice is your company’s auditory calling card. Think carefully about the atmosphere and emotion you want to convey.
- Reliable and warm: Ideal for instructional videos, manuals or sensitive topics where you want to convey a sense of calm and expertise.
- Enthusiastic and energetic: Perfect for a fast-paced advert, an event video or a young, dynamic campaign.
Make sure the tone of voice and delivery reflect what your company stands for. A poor match could cause your message to lose its credibility.
Understand who your audience is
Who exactly do you want to reach with your video or audio message? Your target audience largely determines which voice will work best. Young people simply respond differently to a particular tone of voice and intonation than older people or professional buyers in a business setting.
Choose a voice that your target audience recognises or enjoys listening to. Sometimes a familiar, mature voice works better to convey authority and calm. For a modern, innovative product, a fresh, youthful voice can create just that essential connection with the listener. It’s all about recognisability and empathy.
Dialect, mixed language or standard Belgian Dutch?
In Flanders, we’re very sensitive to linguistic nuances and accents. A voice that sounds too ‘Dutch’ can sometimes miss the mark with a Flemish audience, unless that’s specifically the intention. But even within Flanders itself, you need to make careful choices during the selection process.
- Standard Belgian Dutch: This is the safest and most professional choice for most corporate films, presentations and e-learning courses. It is easily understood by everyone and sounds neutral.
- A subtle local flavour: Sometimes, a slight accent can add just that touch of extra authenticity and relatability, especially if you’re locally based or want to appeal to a very specific region.
When recording the voice-over, make sure the pronunciation comes across as natural and spontaneous. Nothing is as distracting as a voice-over artist who tries too hard to speak ultra-correctly.
Experience and technical quality of the recording
Having a lovely voice is one thing, but a good voice-over artist is, above all, a skilled professional. Experienced voice-over artists know exactly how to handle a microphone, how to control their breathing and how to place the right emphasis without sounding as though they’re simply reading from a script.
What’s more, professional voice-over artists either have their own high-quality studio or work in partnership with a professional sound studio. This guarantees a crystal-clear recording without any distracting background noise, echo or loss of quality. This saves you a great deal of time, money and frustration later on during the editing and sound mixing of your video.
