Why Doesn't Your Ad Have A Female Voiceover? It Should.

Marketers spend millions on establishing their brands and want to know what39s driving campaign returnoninvestment ROIamp160 That39s where thirdparty companies like Nielsen come in to connect the dots with dataamp160 In an ROI study of 500 advertising campaigns Nielsen looked at which elements contribute to sales on all major media platformsamp160 By a huge margin creative was the strongest sales driveramp160 It was responsible for nearly 50 of all sales liftKnowing this Suzanne Grimes Executive Vice President Marketing Cumulus Media and President of Westwood One has made understanding effective audio creative a core value of our companyamp160 quotWe want to know what makes creative resonate specifically from a data perspective and turn our learnings into best practices that advertisers can use as actionable steps for optimizing their adsquot she saysIn one of our studies of how to best leverage audio to drive ROI Westwood One commissioned four separate studies of 284 radio ads that prove women should have more of a starring role in audio creativeamp160 The results show there is much to gain in putting more women on the air yet most AMFM radio and TV ads have a male voiceoveramp160 Using Media Monitors we examined the gender voices used on an average day in a sample of the 100 top AMFM radio advertisers for October 11 2018amp160 Selecting one random ad from each advertiser we found men voiced 72 of the spots and only 28 were voiced by womenThere seems to be a disconnect between what advertisers know and what they practice about spendingamp160 An IPG study recently found that women impact over 90 of purchases for vacations new homes food and groceryamp160and medicationsamp160 They impact 80 of all healthcare purchases and twothirds of computer and auto purchasesamp160 Women have immense spending power but are underrepresented in ad creativeamp160 And saysamp160MediaVillage columnist and renowned advertising journalistamp160Stuartamp160Elliott quotIt just makes sense to embrace all voices from regional accents to trust in female spokespersons amp160to add authenticity to spotsamp160 Given today39s environment the importance of brands communicating diversity and inclusion even through their creative is more important than everquotWomen in fact prefer female voiceovers in AMFM radio adsamp160 Westwood One worked with wellrespected brand and media metrics consultancy Sequent Partners to analyze nearly 100 AMFM radio ads tested by Nielsenamp160 Alice Sylvester the cofounder of Sequent Partners coded each ad as having either a female or male presenter and examined creative performance by gender in the Nielsen dataSylvester39s breakthrough discovery was that women rated femalevoiced ads better for favorability brand recall relevance memorabilityamp160and engagement than malevoiced creativeamp160 Women preferred hearing voices like their own on the radioThe Advertising Benchmark Index ABX confirms this finding with their own 2018 study of 115 AMFM radio adsamp160 The results showed that both men and women preferred female voices in radio creativeamp160 Women responded more favorably to female voices by 14amp160 It39s not just women either men responded more favorably to the femalevoiced radio ads by 5 tooFemalevoiced ads drive greater consumer response than the same ads voiced by a manamp160 Thanks to the findings from Sequent Partners a major retailer wanted to conduct a realworld study to determine whether female voiceovers would work for themamp160 In one set of markets listeners were exposed to a femalevoiced version of the adamp160 In other markets listeners heard the same ad voiced by a maleThe femalevoiced ad strongly boosted unaided awarenessamp160 Nielsen found significant lift in brand awareness among both men and women exposed to the femalevoiced adamp160 But among women the femalevoiced ad elevated brand images moreAuto intenders rate femalevoiced ads the bestamp160 A recent national study by audio creative testing specialist Veritonic found auto dealer association AMFM radio ads voiced by women were some of the best testing creative among both men and womenamp160 While only a few of the ads tested used a female voice in a primary role those ads performed off the chartsamp160 Two of the top five ads contained a leading female speakeramp160 Three of the top ten ads had a female speaker with a leading role That39s a compelling reason for auto advertisers to rethink who they cast in commercialsFemalevoiced ads score better for being authentic trustworthyamp160and uniqueamp160 According to another new study conducted by Veritonic of radio ads from the most prestigious advertising and creative award shows including the Radio Mercury Awards winners and finalists as well as the Cannes Lions and Clio Awards femalevoiced ads performed better on the dimensions of authenticity trustamp160and uniquenessThis is hard evidence to support far greater use of female voiceoversamp160 The Advertising Research Foundation Nielsen Analytic Partnersamp160and most market mix modelers all agree advertising creative is the most significant driver of salesamp160 Creative drives more sales than all media factors combined While so many in advertising obsess over datadriven targeting the ROI studies reveal that powerful and strong creative is by far the biggest driver of sales growth and it39s not going unnoticedquotIt39s well known that women are underrepresented in the production of creative advertisingquot saysamp160ANA Association of National Advertisers Chief Executive Officeramp160Bob Liodiceamp160 quotThat39s why the ANA created the SeeHer initiative which is designed to accurately portray all girls and women in media so that by 2020 they see themselves reflected as they truly areamp160 And now Westwood One has made a significant contribution to the work being done in this area with important new research revealing that women prefer hearing voices like their own on the radioamp160 The ANA applauds their effortsquotCreative is powerfulamp160 Creative voiced by women is even more powerfulamp160 Armed with conclusive findings on the significant impact of female creative it39s time for advertisers to leverage the female voice as a strong and powerful solution to connect with audiences and drive salesClick the social buttons above or below to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Why Doesn't Your Ad Have A Female Voiceover? It Should.

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Pierre Bouvard

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Why Doesn't Your Ad Have A Female Voiceover? It Should.

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