Carl Tyler's Blog :: Is this the voice of someone really excited about an upcoming major product release?

Category Office 2010
So I started watching the Office 2010 videos. This poor women had me asleep within 5 seconds.

Office makes billions of dollars for Microsoft and this is the best they could do? At first I thought that maybe it was one of those robot videos (although if you look at thisexample of Emily they're more life like than this), where it wasn't a real person, talk about monotone. This is the problem many people have when reading teleprompters, it doesn't come across as sincere unless you're really good at it. We see it at Lotusphere in the opening sessions, and her we see it in a Microsoft video. Sadly Monica is not good at it. She'd probably be good at self hypnosis tapes. You're on a warm sandy beach, sleep, your muscles are relaxing, sleep, your floating like a cloud, sleep....

See What's New in Microsoft Web Applications 2010

Now compare Monica from Microsoft with Jennifer from Microsoft, without even looking at them, which one seems genuine and more likely to keep you interest? Jennifer is enthusiastic, she makes you want to listen, it makes you want to find out what Jennifer has to tell you, why is Jennifer excited?.

See What's New in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

Sadly for Microsoft, most of the videos on the page are like Monica.

Think about these videos when you present or do a conference call, if you sound interested yourself, your audience is more likely to be interested, believe in what you're talking about it comes across. Smile, smiles when sincere open people up, as crazy as it sounds people can hear smiles, when you answer the phone always smile, the person at the other end can tell.