Millennial voice in TV commercials and John Krasinski, Digi Mart USA News: Voice artist Tawny Platis has lent her voice to Hulu, Warner Bros., Disney+ and many other brands. In a video, she argues that the distinct way Millennials speak owes a lot to actor John Krasinski and his role as Jim Halpert on The Office.
Platis says commercials of the 1990s, including those for brands like Macy’s and PetSmart, typically featured bright, cheery, in-your-face voiceover performances. She says she starred in many commercials of that style herself.
Before Krasinski became famous for The Office, he was a prominent voice actor for brands such as Verizon and BlackBerry. Many of those commercials, which aired in the early 2000s and 2010s, featured an extraordinarily casual, conversational tone that echoed his later Jim Halpert persona.
Platis recalls that the approach was summed up as, “Hey, I’m just a guy. I’m not really an actor…
You can trust me. It’s like you’re talking to a friend.” She says that for years, nearly every audition she went out for sought a “conversational read” similar to Krasinski’s performances, and that they became genre-defining.
Platis is not the first to identify this speaking style. In 2016, NPR wrote about Millennials’ habit of tacking “I feel like” onto their thoughts, a habit critics say avoids confrontation.
The University of Melbourne describes vocal fry, a creaky voice often used at the end of sentences, as another hallmark of Millennial speech.
The style reflected a move away from anything that felt cheesy, artificial or overly formal. Movie trailers, for example, moved away from big, over-the-top narrators after the death of legendary voiceover artist Don LaFontaine in 2008, and the trailer voice was also seen as too cliché for Millennial audiences.
Platis says the Golden Age of the Millennial voice has passed and that Gen Z voices are now taking center stage in voiceover work. She describes the Gen Z voice as detached and apathetic, like someone talking without looking up from a phone, and says brands now want that sound.
Platis also says the Gen Z voice more closely resembles the sarcasm and unbotheredness associated with Gen X. The article notes that each generation tends to want to do things its own way, and that Millennials’ Jim Halpert-influenced voice is unlikely to fade from memory.
