Sexy Man Voice

The Voice in the Booth
 
Sexy Man Voice …
  
Back in the early days of GPS navigation for cars, I received an email from a Kim Kwon from South Korean. Mr Kim had found my voice details online and thought I would be ideal to be the voice of his company’s new navigation equipment.
 
Compared to today’s complicated and detailed instructions for in car navigation, this one was pretty simple. But still contained around 2000 instructions from turn right in 200 metres to you have reached your destination on the left.
 
After a few emails, voice demos and negotiations, we were set to record the instructions for English speaking Korean drivers.
 
The multitude of audio files were delivered and Mr Kim was very please with the finished product. In fact he paid my Invoice that very same day – this can be very rare in the Voiceover business.
 
Weeks went by and I didn’t give any more thought to my debut as a GPS Navigation Voiceover Artist.  But then out of the blue I received a call from a guy with a very thick Asian accent. After sometime I worked out it was Kim Kwon. Initially, I thought there must have been some issues with the VOs. But this was not the case at all, Mr Kim was after a completely new batch of Voice instructions – ‘one for the ladies’. This left me a little confused, as I’d never been requested to do ‘one for the ladies’ before. It wasn’t until he said that he wanted me to be ‘Sexy Man Voice’ that the penny dropped and I realised what he required.
 
Mr Kim thought it would be best to give me a few examples – ‘Hey baby, we are coming up to one of our favorite destinations on our left hand side’. Even though I pretty much got the idea straight away, I just let Mr Kim give example after example for my our personal entertainment.
 
After a couple of days the scripts arrived. Mr Kim and his colleagues had been watching way too many sloppy American romance movies as nearly all the instructions contained the word ‘baby’ and Casanova overtones.
 
So, with the smooth tones of Barry White and Hot Chocolate’s You sexy thing as my inspiration – ‘Sexy Man Voice’ was born.
 
‘Slow down baby, because in 200 metres I need you to turn right’
 
‘Hey baby, in 1 kilometres we’ll be home safe and sound’
 
‘Turn right in 100 metres, the proceed with caution …. Nice and slow’
 
Occasionally I wonder if there are still ladies being guided around South Korean with help of trusty old ‘Sexy Man Voice'.