L’Oreal, Freeserve & Ferrero Rocher

L’Oreal

I voiced many L’Oreal advertizing campaigns over a 12 year period and uttered many ‘scientific’ words including Nanosomes, Revitalift, Pro-Retinol A, Solar Expertise and possibly the most famous of all, Boswelox.

There was a debate at the time as to whether it should be pronounced ‘Beaus-wolox’ or Bos-wolox’. I persuaded the French client who was attending that the ‘Bos’ pronunciation was the more English one. I voiced a mass of ads starring Jane Fonda, Andie McDowell, Charlize Theron, Claudia Schiffer and other stars and supermodels. If I manage to get hold of links to more I’ll post them up here. In the meantime here are four:

This a TV ad for Solar Expertise for which I have the sound only. The girl’s voice is the ubiquitous and multi talented Kate O’Sullivan sounding like a model!

Freeserve

Some very silly and terrifically crafted ads that I voiced by the wonderful copywriting team of Jerry and Clive with whom I have worked a lot since. The Nudists one is my favourite. Here it is first:

‘Nudists’| you tube don’t like this one despite it having been a networked TV ad as it has covered up naked bodies in it. So it won’t play Dohh.

‘
Hippies’|

‘Skiing’|

‘Fine Arse’|

Ferrero Rocher

An ad on its own. A misunderstood ad. An ad of great renown. I voiced it. I did the main voice over. And the ‘eccelente’. (people actually said ‘eccelente’ at the time as an exclamation of joy!)

And it was me saying ‘Ah Ferrero Rocher’ as well.

The woman playing all the other roles was the marvellous Eve Karpf who was a fabulous mimic, very quick off the mark in a studio, with whom I used to work a lot in the 90s.

Here it is:

Cheesy and badly dubbed!

The analysis of this ad on YouTube seems to express what most people thought, that this was ‘one of the worst ads of all time. Cheesy and badly dubbed’ when in fact this kind of criticism misses the point. When we first voiced it we were told by the agency that it would never go to air as it was in a foreign language and nothing we said could ever dub it properly, which was indeed the case. In this country latterly we didn’t have a tradition as they do in other European countries of dubbing everything as they import so much entertainment media that is in a different language.

‘It will never run’

The ad agency said it would never run and would we put some ‘silly’ voices on it. So Eve and myself weren’t really taking it seriously. After we’d voiced various versions, at the Bridge studio in Great Marlborough Street, (no longer in existence alas) we left believing that would be the end of it. But no, the following day we were called back and addressed by the client, M. Rocher himself who really liked what we’d done! Well actually not him but a big foreign Ferrero marketing cheese who said he liked what we were doing but could we reign it back a tad. So what is on the ad is reigned back! I was clearly well over the top with the original! The agency shifted their view a bit and the original ‘this will never go on air’ discussion was vehemently forgotten once the cleint approved of the ad, especially since when it was aired it caused such a fuss. I don’t think Ferrero Rocher cared as their ad got huge publicity, good or bad, and the market place would never forget the product! For me though it will always be a comedy read. The ad is after all very silly.