A look at character voiceover, announcer delivery, and what it takes to do both in one spot.

The brief: voice a single hair. One of the last survivors on a head experiencing serious shedding. The tone: apocalyptic. The format: a radio commercial — crackling, desperate, calling out to anyone who can hear.

For Pantene’s Abundant & Strong system. Targeting hair loss and breakage.

Give it a listen:

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When I auditioned for this spot, I went full transmission. Think video game distress signal — urgent, dramatic, the kind of read where you half-expect someone to respond with “soldier, do you copy?” It felt right for the premise. A lone hair, broadcasting into the void, watching its friends disappear one by one. That’s a dramatic situation.

But what we landed on was something different — and better.

The final direction pulled it back. Less over-the-top, more grounded. Still a character, still clearly living through something dire, but natural and conversational enough that the listener stays with the story instead of clocking the performance. The apocalyptic premise stays intact. The hair is still broadcasting from the edge. But the urgency comes from the writing and the situation — not from pushing the read into theatrical territory.

That shift — from heightened to human — is the whole job of character voiceover in commercial work.

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What makes this spot a little unusual is that it actually required two completely different deliveries within the same :60.

The hair’s transmission is the character work — specific, grounded, a real personality in an absurd situation played straight. But then the spot closes with a traditional announcer read. Clean, product-forward, totally different energy. The brand voice steps in right after the dying hair signs off.

Which, if you think about it, is a kind of wild ask. You’ve just spent fifty seconds fully committed to a bit — and then you have to pivot cleanly into “Pantene Abundant & Strong” without it feeling like a completely different spot. Too much character bleed and the product message gets weird. Too sharp a pivot and it sounds like two people recorded separately and someone just spliced them together.

The thing that holds it together is tone. Both reads have to live in the same world, even when they’re doing completely different jobs. That’s the part of commercial voice acting I find genuinely interesting — figuring out where the seams are and making sure nobody can find them.

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Character spots live or die on specificity. The voice has to be distinct enough to land the premise, but authentic enough that it doesn’t distract from the product message. Go too far and the listener is watching you act. Stay too subtle and the character disappears entirely.

The sweet spot is a real person in an absurd situation, played straight.

That’s what makes spots like this work — and what makes them genuinely fun to be in the room for. The Pantene team knew exactly where they wanted to land. My job as a female voice actor was to get there with them.

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Looking for a commercial voice actor who can do both? Let’s talk.