Pattern Interruption And The Musicality Of Voice Over

hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
and I just completed a workout with a
bunch of my pros we do a monthly workout
where we do Clips pieces of scripts we
work on them I give them feedback and
direction we ask questions answer
question it’s all part of the the pro
curriculum these monthly workouts and
this month happened to be the month
where most people have taken a module
that talk about IVR as well as
self-direction and commercials and so on
and something that popped up was this
aspect of IVR which is interactive voice
response phone prompts phone trees that
I teach that makes sure that when you’re
doing this kind of work you call
attention to something that can easily
fly by somebody who is on their phone
trying to get their credit card balance
or trying to get through to customer
service in a loud environment and
they’re listening to your recorded bits
to help them find what they’re looking
for and so that’s one of the pattern
interruptions that I wanted to talk to
you about today the second one has to do
with commercials and the way commercials
are aired pattern interruption to begin
with is just what it sounds like you
have something that you expect that’s a
pattern of speech or music or
progression of some sort and yet the
interruption of that pattern calls
attention to something marketers use it
all the time they will start your start
you down a path where you think you know
where things are going and then they’ll
veer off to the left with something
humorous or comical or or intriguing or
interesting and that’s called a pattern
interrupt because you have a pattern
that you are gonna be following but then
it’s interrupted in an interesting way
so one of the things that I teach in the
class is to make sure that when you give
callers and I’m talking about the IVR
class right now when you give callers
the action and the option for that
action this is a very tip
thing would be for sales press 1 for
service press 2 first you have the
option sales or service and then you
have the action that they want to take
press 1 press 2 and what I tell them to
do is to have a certain melody or
musicality about it so that it actually
calls out the attention of the person
who’s listening and it highlights it for
them so what I say to do is for service
press 1 and in there is a little beat
before the number and then the number at
a higher pitch then one might expect in
the pattern might dictate because you
might think you should say for service
press 1 for sales press 2 or something
like that the problem is when you’re on
the phone and there may be who knows
what is going on around you car noise
you’re inside a store you’re at home and
the televisions on who knows what’s
going on you want to be able to hear
what the action is that you’re supposed
to take to get the option that you
wanted so I say take a beat and raise
your pitch that’s called a pattern
interrupt
so for sales press 1 for service press 2
and hearing it isolated like that it may
sound a little jerky and a little
halting and a little plotting but when
you’re on the phone your goal is to find
what you’re looking for your goal is to
interact with the company and you want
to make that as easy as possible so that
pattern interrupt makes that possible
now there’s one other way of doing a
pattern interrupt that also applies to
what we do and that is in a commercial
where the product name or the brand the
company name or the positioning
statement those are the three most
important parts
of any commercial and the three most
important words in any commercial the
name of the product the name of the
brand and the positioning statement
and when those things occur at the very
very beginning or at the very very end
of a commercial it kind of requires a
pattern interrupt when you do your work
you know we always try to be as
realistic as the story calls for you
know helpful authentic authoritative but
you have to remember sort of the space
in which these things are being
exhibited and what I mean by that is if
you’re doing a commercial for radio or
television or for the internet there’s
always something that precedes it and
there’s always something that follows it
either another commercial or a promo
announcement or the weather or pieces of
a show and those things could have
sounds at the end or at the beginning of
what precedes or what follows that are
louder or softer or have explosions or
crowd noise or a music bed or who knows
what it is but your job at the very
beginning of your commercial is to
arrest the attention away from whatever
preceded the commercial so that you can
talk about solving the problem with your
guys product or service right and so
you’ll sometimes hear voice over talent
do a very realistic job of telling a
story in a commercial except at the
beginning and at the end you might hear
them say new from Nabisco it’s double
thin Oreos I don’t even know if that’s a
product
or at the very end buy it now Toyota
right there’s a little bit of a of an
elevation because they realize that
there might be coming out of something
that is arresting might be going into
something that’s arresting and your
client is paying for 30 seconds or 60
seconds or 15 seconds whatever it is
they’re not paying for twenty nine point
five or twenty nine they’re paying for
the full amount of time and so to grab
the attention of the listener or viewer
you do a pattern interrupt and that
pattern interrupt is okay the pattern is
usually I’m gonna talk normally I’m
gonna be authoritative and you know I’m
gonna be authentic and I’m gonna tell a
story I’m gonna help you solve a problem
but at the very beginning and at the
very end push it just a little bit a
little bit of Hollywood a little bit of
spotlight on it just to grab the
attention so new from Nabisco or at the
very end
um save money live better Walmart right
there’s a there’s a pattern to that and
there’s a musicality to that anyway I
found it interesting and I thought you
might like to understand why I teach
things that way that pattern interrupt
way because it helps you grab the
attention of the viewer or the listener
and you help them get their job done you
help them understand why the product or
service that you are talking about is
going to be useful to them yeah
or you help them in the case of IVR find
what they’re looking for it to interact
with the company so you win either way
it’s awesome
any other pattern interrupts that you’re
familiar with anything else that you use
pattern interrupt for does this all make
sense to you leave me a comment below
and let me know I’d love to find out if
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I’m David H Lawrence xvii I thank you so
much for watching and I’ll talk to you
tomorrow.