Can AI ever replace humans? This topic comes up all the time in our industry! Sure, AI can quickly replicate someone’s voice. But at the present time, it’s not able to capture nuances and feelings – the very things that create strong psychological bonds with audiences. While you can’t deny AI is an incredibly helpful tool, it misses the mark when it comes to emotional marketing – the process of forming a relationship between a voice and a listener. Based on studies, consumers are loyal to brands that they feel emotionally connected to. This is exactly why companies don’t just sell products and services – they sell feelings.
Recently, “The Simpsons” voice actor Hank Arazia did a fun AI-versus-human voice acting experiment to demonstrate this important human connection. Watch it below, and see for yourself!
How does emotional marketing work?
Let’s say your company sells chocolate. You want a marketing campaign that shows people why they should choose your chocolate over other brands. After all, you use the highest quality ingredients, have sugar-free options, and offer tons of flavors. While these are wonderful benefits customers will enjoy, many of your competitors offer the same options. This is where emotional marketing comes in. It won’t just help you stand out… it will also help you form a unique bond with customers that will keep them coming back for more.
A global brand that has always done this well is Coke. When trying to stand out from other soft drink companies, they created an emotional branding campaign in 2011 called “Share a Coke“. They began by researching the top 250 most popular names in 80 different countries. Then they removed the Coke logo from one side of their bottles and replaced it with a person’s name. Once the bottles hit the shelves, customers could search for their names, as well as the names of their friends and family members. The goal was to share a Coke with someone special. Customers loved sharing their Cokes so much that after 10 years of declining sales in the U.S., sales increased over 2%. The campaign added 1000 more names in 2015, and in 2017 it replaced people’s names with favorite summer holiday destinations. It was a total success!
How can brands communicate emotions across different cultures and languages?
This answer lies in the 3 pillars of international branding: translation, localization and voice overs / dubbing.
In their “Share a Coke” campaign, Coke used localization to determine that some countries like China don’t typically put people’s names or any type of personalization on products. They knew that their fun message would be lost on Chinese audiences. So instead, they translated terms of endearment into Mandarin and put those on the bottles. This allowed the message to easily resonate with people around the country.
Read how translation and localization can boost your success in India (and anywhere in the world)!
If you want to take emotional marketing a step further, a professional voice over is the way to go! What better way is there to connect with people than through voices that speak their own language and dialects?
Whether it’s a commercial, corporate training video, or a social media reel, voice overs play a huge role in emotional branding. The tone, the pitch and the emotions conveyed through the voice you use directly represent your brand. AI-generated voices still struggle with this, but authentic human voices are able to carry warmth, emotion and empathy to listeners.
Check Out Our Voice Over Samples:
“In a world of algorithms, hashtags, and followers – know the true importance of human connection.” – Simi Fromen
AI versus human voice overs: Who wins?
Because emotional marketing takes relationships between customers and brands to a deeper level, it’s difficult to imagine that “artificial voices” would be able to replace real ones. After all, emotional branding builds personal and lasting connections, linking humans together. As of right now, you can clearly hear that the tone of AI in Hank’s video isn’t capable of providing that human touch that people crave. Will it ever be able to do so? We simply don’t know. What we do know is that it’s an amazing tool that can help us as we venture into an exciting future. One where humans and machines – together – will hopefully be able to create businesses that truly thrive!
Ready to start your next project?
Want to learn how we can help you translate, localize and add narration or subtitles to your emotional marketing project? Reach out to us today! We’re a NYC multimedia post-production agency specializing in translation, localization, casting, voice over & subtitling services. We’d love to help you create unique experiences for your global audiences!