Brand voice is what customers see, hear, and feel when they interact with your brand. It’s the words that you chose, the way that you use them, and the emotions that they evoke. Brand voice also includes visual elements, such as a logo that’s easily recognizable. Increasingly, brand voice is audible as well. As voice assistants become more popular, they will do more than simply interpret human speech and respond to spoken commands; they will represent your brand. Is your brand ready to sound the way you imagine it?

From Sonic Branding to Alexa Custom Assistant

Sonic branding, the strategic use of sound to foster an emotional connection, has a rich history with in-store audio marketing. Now that we live in the Age of Alexa, sound is allied to artificial intelligence (AI), which uses algorithms to make decisions. Recently, Amazon announced that companies can access Alexa’s advanced AI to build their own intelligent assistants. With Alexa Custom Assistant, device makers and service providers can meet a customer’s informational needs while sharing a brand’s personality.

Fiat Chrysler, Alexa Custom Assistant’s first customer, is already planning to build a branded intelligent assistant for select vehicle models. “To create natural voice responses, each brand can choose their own unique voice”, explains Ned Curic, vice president of Amazon Alexa Automotive. “As part of that process”, Curic writes in a recent Amazon developer blog, “Alexa’s voice science experts will guide them throughout the recording process and develop the voice using advanced machine learning algorithms.”

Perfect Item For Kids

Kids loved soft toys like these, with or without a press-to-pay element. But when you can give them something genuinely custom and unique like this, they can enjoy hearing about a loved one with every press. Brilliant for families spread across the world, helping to bridge the gap with a toy that can be enjoyed at any time.

Voice Control and Audible Personality

Sound Hound, an audio and speech recognition company, is competing with Amazon and offering a different toolset. As voicebot.AI reports, Sound Hound recently partnered with ReadSpeaker, which provides a digital voice interface creator and text-to-speech (TTS) software, to offer more natural, human-sounding voices. As of December 2020, there were more than 90 adjustable voices speaking in more than 30 languages on Houndify voice AI, the company’s platform for creating personalized voice assistants.

You don’t need to participate in a beta test to give your brand a voice. Voice Express also recently launched a new product called CONNECT™. It’s a voice assistant in print and the company chose to use Ariana Escalante, a successful producer as well as brand spokeswoman in their promotional videos and as their voice talent. Her voice was used not only for the talking brochure but also in the companion Alexa Skill and Google Action. Press-to-hear buttons on the product web pages launch a browser-based voice interaction with Ariana’s voice. Users who call the toll-free number (888-997-5264) are greeted by Ariana and invited to interact using voice alone. Voice Express chose to follow its own advice and create a multichannel unified brand personality with a branded voice – and so can you.

Finding Your Brand Voice

Thank you for engaging Voice Express, where we enable brands and consumers to communicate in a direct, unmediated fashion through self-playing media. Visit our website to learn more about our voice-enabled technologies and how we help brands like Build-A-Bear Workshop, Sony Music, Johnson & Johnson, as well as others.