Voiceover artists ‘play crucial part in pharmaceutical ads’

Voiceover artists are a particularly important aspect of commercials for pharmaceutical products, an expert has argued.

Dr Ruth Day, a cognitive scientist at Duke University, recently carried out a study to find out how people respond to voices in pharmaceutical ads.

One commercial for a product rushed through the side-effects of a treatment. The other was for a drug for the same health condition with comparable side-effects, but ran through these at a much slower pace.

The study found that those who watched the commercial with the speedy narration were less likely to remember what was said than people who viewed the less rushed ad, reports STAT.

This kind of insight helps pharmaceutical companies devise appropriate marketing campaigns, bearing in mind aspects such as the tone of voice and complexity of sentence structures.

"There's a shift in how the voice is used to make it easier to understand the benefits and less easy to understand the risks," said Dr Day.