Hyundai goes for irony with Kelsey Grammer

Sometimes, when I'm bored and my WiFi router is broken, I like to play "guess the celebrity commercial voice over." Most of the time, I usually get things right, as advertisers are using more familiar voices than ever before. But sometimes I wonder if a company uses a particular voice for more reasons than they're available, recognizable, and like cashing large checks for very little work.

Case in point is a recent set of Hyundai ads starring the voice of Kelsey Grammer. In the ads, Grammer compares the attributes of the Korean car company's Santa Fe SUV with a much more expensive Land Rover. Of course, this being a Hyundai ad, the Santa Fe comes out favorably, matching the Land Rover in every category except cup holders.

But, knowing Grammer's history playing sophisticated, highbrow characters like Frasier Crane, one would think that he'd be doing voice overs for Land Rover instead of Hyundai, right? That's the idea, I'd imagine; Hyundai has been trying to overcome the quality stigma that they gained when their earliest cars (which they started selling here 22 years ago already) fell apart soon after leaving the lot. Hyundai's reliability has been highly rated by Consumer Reports and others for years now, but I'm sure people still think their cars are junk.

Enter Grammer. Whatever his personal history may be, people hear his voice and they think of refinement and quality. So why not have him try to give Hyundai a classier image? Even if people don't recognize his voice, it's smooth and upper-crusty manner will be enough to convey a luxurious image.

By the way, Grammer isn't the only Fraiser star to do voice overs; his co-star Peri Gilpin also has also does ads for Hyundai, as well as McDonalds. Want to know who else does commercial voice overs? Take this quiz at the Voice Over Resource Center... you might be surprised.