1. Introduction
Hello to all Agency readers! Welcome to the first creative editorial where we will interview the most inspiring and bold creatives in the marketing industry. The main goal of this category is to give a voice to the next creative professional that will help you turn your next endeavor into a living reality.
I have the utmost honor to introduce you to a friend and colleague in past projects, Amanda de Andrade! We met back in 2022 when I was looking for someone to help me give a voice to the protagonist of my book. I was immediately astonished by the quality and passion that was infused in Amanda’s voiceovers and that is exactly when we kickstarted our first collaboration.
But enough chatter from me, let’s hear from the owner of such a talented professional. The typewriter is now in your hands Amanda!
2. Interview
The Olympus, Mars, a Disney Cartoon, a Pixar movie, Brazil… We want to hear, Amanda, where do you really come from? How old are you? What languages do you speak?
Well, sometimes I ask myself the same thing, but let’s stick to the facts! I was told that I was born in Brazil. I’m 29, and I can say I speak Brazilian Portuguese and American English at a native level.
How many years of professional experience? Can you mention some companies that you have worked for in the past? Where are you currently working? Are you available for new projects?
I started playing with my voice when I was a kid, and I was a professional Classical guitarist until my 20s, so you see that it took me a long time to start working professionally and digitally with voices and sounds. In 2015 I started working with Music Production and Voice Over and for the last 8 years, I haven’t stopped. Things happened and are still happening too fast for me!
I arrive at the point where I lost the track of my clients, really. Mentioning companies and clients in the voice-over industry is crazy. It’s crazy because when you arrive at a such point in your career, you can say that you worked with half of the 500-fortune companies – which doesn’t make any sense to the majority of other creative jobs! Additionally, some big clients ask me to sign non-disclosure agreements, so there are dozens of clients and projects that I can never, ever tell about.
As clients, I am allowed to name giant companies, like Uber, Itaú Bank, Nike, Radio BBC, and Mercado Livre... however, I always feel it’s unfair when I mention some clients because I need to leave out many others, like Microsoft, Wacom, Pokémon, Kaspersky, Pfizer, Ipiranga, Björk itself! This is crazy…
Besides your graduation from Hogwarts, what have you studied? When did you realize you had an artistic vocation for voiceover and sound engineering?
Ah!, ah! ah! (this is how I’m supposed to laugh with nobility and good manners?) Well, I didn’t tell you but… actually, I’m a dropout from Hogwarts. And also from the Conservatoire of Music. I’ve always followed an autodidactic path too, just like you, but it got intensified after I stopped studying Classical Music, in 2014.
Vocation for voice? When I was kind of 9 years old. For voice-over? It was in 2015. For personal reasons, I couldn’t leave my home for years, so I needed to stay and find a way to develop myself at home. That was when my husband first suggested I experiment with voice-over. For sound engineering? Well, it was also in 2015, because at that time I had to learn audio engineering to pursue the perfect sound I had in my mind and to work with my own music and my own voice, but now inside a computer.
Before studying that, did you ever consider exploring other fields that enticed the professional within you?
Before I decided to study Music professionally, in 2011, I thought I was going to be a scientist. I loved Math, Physics… But everybody around me thought I was going to be a doctor.
The moment of truth, what college or school subject you struggled the most with?
You thought you were going to catch me off guard, huh? Actually, I didn’t struggle with any field! I was such a geek… When I was 17, I passed in eleven public Universities for Medical Schools in Brazil. In the first week of Medical School, I left it. That was when I decided I was going to study Classical Music. So in summary, I loved to study… I feel I could have been whatever I wanted. And here I am, working with something I didn’t know even exist at that time.
Back to your work, among the 720+ projects that you have delivered in your inspiring career, which do you consider the most challenging so far?
I didn’t expect such a question. Hmm… The most challenging… Some projects come to mind, like the ones for Nike, for Meta, but considering the bigger technical difficulty, I would mention a game character that I had to create for a Korean game development company. It was in English and needed a light Brazilian accent. Anna – the character - was edgy, impatient, cynical, strong, extremely confident, angry, and unstoppable. It took 2 rounds of feedback to create her vocal design. There were shouts, cries, zombie sounds, jokes, and venom dropping from Anna’s words. The good part is that team was happy with the result!
Why is artistic voiceover important for a brand nowadays?
I’d write a book about it, but I’ll write one small argument – which is not even the most important one: Brands and Marketing Offices don’t talk so much about Brand Voice, Tone of Voice, and Brand Persona, but when they do, it mostly regards the copywriting, in the same way, a brand has a visual personality, a color palette, a set of moods, typography… And they should have all of that. But what about the sound identity?
We are all born only hearing, feeling, and smelling. We didn’t see too much. We didn’t understand verbal language. Sounds trigger instinctive and deep strings inside of us. If you hear the sound of your mother’s voice, you know it’s her. If you have a sequence of 3 words, it can be from her or not. Maybe you know it’s her but probably you would need more details to judge.
So, marketers, creatives, and directors cannot forget their brands are heard before they are comprehended. That’s why image and sound are so important. That’s why a voice with the right elements and attributes is crucial. In a millisecond, your consumer or audience will make a decision: to love or hate, to ignore or to crave your brand.
If today was a sunny Saturday afternoon, what would you probably be doing?
I’d be traveling through Santa Catarina with my family, in our giant, black Yankee Ford, that drinks 1 liter of gas per 5 kilometers, listening to Country Blues, and admiring the landscapes, searching for a private spot for our picnic. We do it almost every Saturday!
3. Portfolio
Team Liquid
Uma Única Onda, “A single wave”.
Animation for the eSports / Video game team Liquid. Young, brave, innocent voice.
SAP
SAP S4/Hana Cloud Product Presentation
Voice-over design for SAP’s online AI experience with multiple outputs and paths for the user to choose from. Steady, clear, empowered voice.
WWF
A Maior Hora do Planeta, “The Greatest Earth Hour”.
Voice-over for a series of videos for 2023’s WWF campaign Earth Hour. Authentic, organic, caring, hopeful voice.
Portfolio
http://www.vimeo.com/amandadeandrade
4. Contact
LinkedIn Profile Link
http://www.linkedin.com/in/amandadeandrade
Contact Email
projects@amandadeandrade.com
Discount Offer for Agency Readers?
Of course! Not so much for the job itself, but as an incentive to start a conversation and create something together. Each VO has a different calculation, but to make the math simple, I don’t mind charging only the studio rate in our first project together. Throughout the next 3 months, any reader that reaches out and mentions that they found out about me here, will get this discount.