It seems obvious, but I was just listening to a radio ad and realized that I didn’t know what business they were advertising, until I heard the ad a couple times.  The ad is for Mike Shaw Subaru.  I know this now, because I’ve probably heard the ad half a dozen times.  Unfortunately, the first few times I heard the ad, I thought that they were talking about Marshall Subaru.  Both Marshall Subaru and Mike Shaw Subaru sound the same when you’re not enunciating.  And they even mentioned the name of the business at least 5 times in the ad.  They even tried to get me to go to their website, which sounded like marshallsubaru.com.

To make things worse, the voice talent has an Australian accent.  This could have been 50% of the problem.  It’s hard to say.  Radio stations will encourage you to use voice talent that has an accent to increase memorability but remember this blog post before you choose your talent.  Make sure that people who have never heard of your company before know what they are saying, otherwise you might just be branding someone else’s company.

Chadd Bryant