Bert and Ernie will guide you there
TomTom records Bert and Ernie’s navigation voices from AmsterdamAdBlog on Vimeo.
True, after the ones with John Cleese and Darth Vader and Yoda, the format is getting repetitive. The adverts are long, but Bert and Ernie make it work for me. This one was created by Pool Worldwide, based in Amsterdam for Dutch product TomTom.
I heard a story (by story I mean I have no facts to back it up) from a Dutch friend that the product was named TomTom because in the United States, obviously their main target market, you cannot have a product named after a person, like Bob or Michael. Feel free to comment on this.
I’m not a fan of the TomTom anymore for a few reasons: it totally went blank on me once as I drove into Germany. Every other European country was on that thing, but German vanished. Bad road trip.
My smart phone does a better, more accurate job. Sure, I have make sure the phone stays plugged in while driving, but the instructions were always on time and the female Dutch voice didn’t sound like she wanted to be euthanized. I actually have several Dutch friends who use the Flemish voice on their TomTom’s because that’s how depressing she sounds.
But then there’s always Ernie and Bert.
(Link: www.amsterdamadblog.com)
That story can’t be 100% true. Microsoft had software called “Bob” around 1995, that was a Windows desktop add-on/replacement.