Imitation foreign accents on car radio adverts
Discussion
Can anyone explain why the idea of using a faux foreign voice to narrate a car commercial on the radio is such a popular thing with people making these adverts?
I can clearly remember Volvo having a pretend Swedish lady advertising for them. At the moment I regularly hear Fiat with a chap speaking in English with an Italian bent. The Renault lady does it in French (speaking English). I don't know where the Skoda lady is supposed to be from.
I can clearly remember Volvo having a pretend Swedish lady advertising for them. At the moment I regularly hear Fiat with a chap speaking in English with an Italian bent. The Renault lady does it in French (speaking English). I don't know where the Skoda lady is supposed to be from.
Glad someone else is irritated by it too. Even as a non-fluent speaker of these languages I can tell they're English. Same for that Mozzarella ad.
I fly on TAP Air Portugal longhaul a lot and they have a brilliant safety video with all sorts of nationalities reading the briefing. Even though I don't speak Portuguese I am exposed to a lot of it and I really struggle to work out who is what nationality if I only listen. The English & Scottish guys are particularly good, would be interesting to hear how accurate it is for a native's ear.
I fly on TAP Air Portugal longhaul a lot and they have a brilliant safety video with all sorts of nationalities reading the briefing. Even though I don't speak Portuguese I am exposed to a lot of it and I really struggle to work out who is what nationality if I only listen. The English & Scottish guys are particularly good, would be interesting to hear how accurate it is for a native's ear.
It's also a bit annoying because you know if any politician put on a foreign accent for ANY reason he would probably lose his job and that smacks of double-standards. Sure, I'm saying a politician would be a potential casualty here and people probably wouldn't have any problem with that happening to a politician... but that's just a suggestion for how a situation may arise. I think over the years CEOs and other senior business executives have suffered severe consequences for being caught mimicking foreigners or similar sorts of behaviour.
YET... if it's an advert for a Citroen you can go all stripy t-shirts, onions on strings and distinctly French noises and apparently that's totally acceptable.
I'm not so much annoyed that they're committing this sin.. more that this kind of humorous mimicry has apparently only one legitimate use in commercial advertising in the pursuit of profit but generally it isn't acceptable in public in any other sense that I can think of.
YET... if it's an advert for a Citroen you can go all stripy t-shirts, onions on strings and distinctly French noises and apparently that's totally acceptable.
I'm not so much annoyed that they're committing this sin.. more that this kind of humorous mimicry has apparently only one legitimate use in commercial advertising in the pursuit of profit but generally it isn't acceptable in public in any other sense that I can think of.
It is a bit of a minefield. Probably safer if you use a native of said country so accent when speaking English is not fake.
On the flip side, if you have a character who is supposed to be foreign and they are speaking English with native English speakers and they don’t have an accent…or probably worse they have a specific regional U.K. accent eg Geordie, would you be able to accept them as foreign?
Of course where it really goes off the rails is where you have characters supposedly speaking in their own language but it is in English and they have an accent, as if they were speaking English (a la allo allo!)
On the flip side, if you have a character who is supposed to be foreign and they are speaking English with native English speakers and they don’t have an accent…or probably worse they have a specific regional U.K. accent eg Geordie, would you be able to accept them as foreign?
Of course where it really goes off the rails is where you have characters supposedly speaking in their own language but it is in English and they have an accent, as if they were speaking English (a la allo allo!)
Skoda, apparently all of a sudden we have to say SCHkoda instead of Skoda, coz some fake accent actor said it..
Oh and the best bit about radio, is the stupid moronic ad companies then expect the poor voice actress to read the terms and conditions really fast while still doing the accent, which they cant of course. Renault are great, she loses it completely, makes me even less likely to buy one. Don't patronise me, I know they are sodding French. That is nothing to shout about by the way, being French!
Why on earth do these cretinous, moronic, self fulfulling nutters think this makes any difference to buying a car.
it is like ALWAYS driving a car in city streets with no traffic, it is like pretending a supermodel turns her head to see a bloody Kia Ceed drive past. All blokes in ca ads have beards, all women look like supermodels, it is not attainable, realistic or relative so just stop.
What planet are these people on and why do people continue to use them>?
Oh and the best bit about radio, is the stupid moronic ad companies then expect the poor voice actress to read the terms and conditions really fast while still doing the accent, which they cant of course. Renault are great, she loses it completely, makes me even less likely to buy one. Don't patronise me, I know they are sodding French. That is nothing to shout about by the way, being French!
Why on earth do these cretinous, moronic, self fulfulling nutters think this makes any difference to buying a car.
it is like ALWAYS driving a car in city streets with no traffic, it is like pretending a supermodel turns her head to see a bloody Kia Ceed drive past. All blokes in ca ads have beards, all women look like supermodels, it is not attainable, realistic or relative so just stop.
What planet are these people on and why do people continue to use them>?
Truckosaurus said:
LukeBrown66 said:
...it is like ALWAYS driving a car in city streets with no traffic...
This is because the UK rules prevent them showing car adverts with any sort of speed or enjoyment.When you see American adverts for cars they are totally different.
Audi got around the issue of not being able to demonstrate the performance of the R8 in an advert by showing it running on a dyno and using as much artistic photography and audio as they could to make what I thought was quite an impressive advert.
TV adverts have declined hugely from the Ridley Scott directed , massive budget ads pre internet . Burning fields of sugar cane (?) in Peugeot ads, weird s
t Dunlop ad with bloke in gimp mask , genuinely funny ads for - eeek - cigars , booze and fags . And now it's 'Buy this ! It's dead good. And, like , we care about stuff y'know? '
I also get profoundly depressed when I realise , from my TV choice , I'm in a target audience for funeral plans and bloody cruises .
But on topic ,, nearly . when will ad directors realise that not quite everyone in the UK wants to hear voiceovers sounding like South London wannabe gangstas innit.
t Dunlop ad with bloke in gimp mask , genuinely funny ads for - eeek - cigars , booze and fags . And now it's 'Buy this ! It's dead good. And, like , we care about stuff y'know? ' I also get profoundly depressed when I realise , from my TV choice , I'm in a target audience for funeral plans and bloody cruises .
But on topic ,, nearly . when will ad directors realise that not quite everyone in the UK wants to hear voiceovers sounding like South London wannabe gangstas innit.
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