Keith Scott (born 29 October 1953) is an Australian voice actor, comedian, impressionist and animation historian.
Career
At a young age, Scott was always enchanted by the mimics and impressionists on The Ed Sullivan Show. He began developing his ability to impersonate voices in high school, doing cartoon characters (the first of which being Mr. Jinks) and teacher's voices. In October 1972, just after leaving school, Scott was hired by William Hanna, the head of Hanna-Barbera, which had established a large animation studio in Sydney, Australia. He got the gig when he brought in some letters that he had received from Daws Butler (voice of Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, etc.) in December 1970. Hanna gave him a letter of recommendation when he was retrenched from the H-B office, and his name was such a credible one that it got Scott an instant agent, and his voice-over career began. In 1974, Scott began doing either impersonations or original character voices in many anonymous radio and TV commercials, and was promoted at Sydney clubs as "the Voice of 1000 Commercials".[2][3][4]
He also made many appearances on TV shows as a comic impressionist, including Hey Hey It's Saturday and The Midday Show, and has provided voices for various Australian animations, including Yoram Gross's Dot feature films, Blinky Bill (he also sang the original version of the theme song for the first season), Tabaluga, Skippy: Adventures in Bushtown and Flipper and Lopaka. In the case of Yoram Gross' productions, Scott began working for Gross in 1984 and usually provided all of the male character voices. Across Australia he can be heard on some fifty radio stations, skewering the reputations of media and political types in How Green Was My Cactus.[5]
Scott became internationally famous for his expert "matching" of cartoon characters. In July 1990, he was appointed an official licensed voice of Warner Bros' Looney Tunes characters for Australia, following the death of Mel Blanc in 1989, and since then he did Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety, Sylvester and the rest for countless animated TV commercials, live shows and promotions for Warner Bros. Movie World, Westfield, KFC, etc.[2][5][6] Scott had narrated a TV promotion for The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie in 1983,[7] and met Blanc in May 1985, taping some impersonations for the Triple M network and trading blows with their voice impressions; he did Elmer Fudd and Jack Benny, while Blanc did Bugs and Sy the Mexican.[8] He was also approved by Hanna-Barbera to do the voices of Fred Flintstone, Yogi Bear and others.[5]
In 1991, a couple of years after Ward died in 1989, his daughter Tiffany took over his company and began revitalizing The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends characters. At that time Scott had made a tape of all the imitations of Bullwinkle J. Moose, Boris Badenov, Dudley Do-Right and a lot of the supporting characters in March of that year. Tiffany got a copy of the tape from June Foray (voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel). Once Tiffany heard the tape, she realized that Scott had obviously studied it for years, so she and Ward's wife Ramona appointed him the official voices in 1992.[2] Scott did the voice of the narrator in George of the Jungle and George of the Jungle 2, and provided the voices for Bullwinkle, Boris, Fearless Leader, The Narrator and the RBTV Announcer in the 2000 motion picture The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (for which he had been specially flown to the United States several times). Also in 2000, Scott was originally cast as the voice of Diesel 10 in Thomas and the Magic Railroad, but was ultimately replaced by Neil Crone after test audiences said that Scott made the character sound too frightening for young children. However, his voice can still be heard in early UK and US trailers of the film. Scott also narrated the Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends toy merchandise commercials from Bluebird Toys in Australia in 1998.
Unreleased radio series produced and recorded by Bill Dowling at Top Spots Digital/Sound Kitchen in 1991, part of a promotion of Warner Bros. Movie World[168][169][170]
The Australian Entertainment Mo Awards (commonly known informally as the Mo Awards), were annual Australian entertainment industry awards. They recognise achievements in live entertainment in Australia from 1975 to 2016. Keith Scott won three awards in that time.[179]
^"Keith Scott, 1989". Facebook. Retrieved 16 August 2020. They're posting old clips of we '80s stand-uppers on the quirky Australian comedy-variety show HEY, HEY IT'S SATURDAY! (an earlier one with me from 1990 is below if you scroll). Here's my spot from June 2nd, 1989: Daryl Sommers, the show's host, asked me to reprise a medley of cartoon voices, and I'm glad he did, because way back when Warner Bros. saw this (Mel Blanc died only five weeks later), and within months I was appointed as the official "licensed" voice to do all the Looney Tunes characters in this end of the world, in animated TV ads, on radio, and for theme parks. I had 25 enjoyable years doing the beloved WB cartoon voices, and all because of this TV gig!! At least the voices hold up from 26 years ago (the once-topical political gags work too; however I do fret about a couple of non-PC gags you couldn't do now, but back in the day, no-one blinked).
^ abcdefghEditorial Staff, Asian Advertising & Marketing (11 September 1991). "CAMPAIGNS: Bugs Bunny sells Mirinda in integrated campaign". Asian Advertising & Marketing. Retrieved 3 July 2024. The traditional rivalry between Coke and Pepsi has become animated. The "flavour drink" brands owned by each company, Coke's Fanta and Pepsi's Mirinda, have an advertising agency in Singapore: enlisted the sales help of some influential characters: cartoon characters to be exact. Fanta has been using Disney characters in its advertising for the past few years, and now, whether by coincidence or not, Mirinda has counter-punched by using the only cartoon heavyweights capable of going toe-to-toe against Disney: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and other Looney Tunes luminaries from Warner Bros. The campaign is the largest marketing push ever for Pepsi-Cola International's flavour drink brand, and stems from a US $15 million licensing partnership signed earlier this year between Mirinda and Warner Bros. Mirinda's "Bugs campaign" is running in all corners of the globe where the soft drink is consumed which means just about everywhere except North America, Africa and continental Europe. Mirinda is spending more than US$4.1 million on the campaign this year. What's unusual about the worldwide media blitz is that it originated from an advertising agency in Singapore, Ogilvy & Mather. In the Asia-Pacific region, more than a year ago, Mirinda, a 10-flavour line of soft drinks whose most popular variety is orange, realised that it lacked a strong identity in many countries. "It had had four campaigns in four years, but with very little impact," says regional management supervisor of Ogilvy & Mather, Singapore, Peter Wilken. "There was no brand identity, and no investment in [advertising] except in Thailand. We were charged with getting things moving." A total of six different O&M offices in the region submitted creative ideas for a Mirinda relaunch, after the client had determined to hitch its ad wagon to the Looney Tunes stars. "We tried to think of a creative project that could run regionally, to exploit the Looney Tunes characters, led by Bugs Bunny," says Wilken. BURIED TREASURE: Mirinda ads: classic slapstick from Bugs. Bugs was deemed the Mirinda ads' most universally popular character. ("Elmer Fudd did not test so well," he says.) With advice from Warner Bros. Merchandising in Sydney, O&M's Singapore office came up with a creative strategy revolving around Bugs and friends. The Singapore concepts were chosen because they remained true to the original Warner Bros. cartoon style without letting the sales message get lost in the animated shenanigans. "We wanted to use the originality of the Warner Bros. characters in a way that would distinctly promote Mirinda," says Wilken. "Bugs has been successful for 50 years, so there is substantial borrowed-interest to be had." The agency had a budget of about US $650,000 to produce three cartoons this year, although the third spot will not be produced until late in the year." That's only about one-fifth what it would cost to produce a campaign like this in the US," says senior writer at O&M, Clive Morris. Flix Animation of Sydney, a Warner-approved graphics house, contributed the animation (by Peter Luschwitz). The voice-over artist was also approved by Warner: Keith Scott, a Mel Blanc soundalike who lives in Sydney. The campaign targets children aged 10 to 14, with a secondary appeal to parents, who may have grown up on the classic Looney Tunes cartoons. O&M's creative approach was bound by the strict guidelines which Warner Bros. imposes on the use of Bugs and company, including how the characters are to be paired (for instance, Tweety Bird may not be paired with Wile E. Coyote, and so on). "We made the commercials classic slapstick, 100 per cent visual, with no language barriers," says Morris. "We wanted to make this a Mirinda commercial, not a Bugs commercial." This is reflected in the first two spots. In one, a thirsty Daffy Duck tries to steal Bugs' can of Mirinda, and ends up being handed a stick of dynamite by the crafty Bugs. The final shot features Bugs holding a can of Mirinda rather than his carrot and saying the tagline, "You can't out thinka Mirinda drinker." The other features Yosemite Sam and Bugs, with Sam doing a classic fall off a cliff (after hovering in the air for a couple of beats until he realises that he's no longer standing on solid ground), as he hunts for a buried treasure trove of Mirinda. Both commercials were produced in versions of 15 seconds and 30 seconds, with two versions featuring either a can or bottle of Mirinda. The bottle versions are for such countries as Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, where the product is sold in bottles. The international rollout began in February, when the commercials began to air in Malaysia. This was followed in April by Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore. Australia, Pakistan and Bangladesh began in May, with Taiwan, Korea and the Canary Islands in June. The campaign broke in New Zealand in August. South American countries are scheduled to begin running the campaign late this year, Indonesia will begin next year, and there are no exact dates yet for the Middle East. In the Asia-Pacific region, the estimated media expenditure (in US $) is: Thailand, $1 million; Philippines, $600,000; Korea, $700,000; Malaysia, $500,000; Singapore, $250,000; Taiwan, $700,000; Australia, $250,000 and New Zealand, $100,000. In Asia-Pacific, the Bugs relaunch has helped Mirinda boost its sales so far this year by 18 per cent (excluding the Philippines, where the industry is suffering from a 27 per cent price increase). According to a tracking study, advertising awareness and brand awareness for Mirinda are up substantially in each country where the campaign is running. "The campaign is even more successful in countries where the Looney Tunes cartoons themselves are running on TV," says Wilken. He notes that Korea has only recently begun to air Bugs Bunny cartoons, and therefore he "borrowed interest" of the commercials is lower. Yet Wilken says that in Singapore and the Philippines, the target groups of 10-to-14-year-old children have given the commercials an approval rating (in copy testing) of 80 to 90 per cent. "This beats the all-time high established by the successful 7-Up Fido Dido campaign in the Philippines," says Wilken. You can't out thinka Mirinda drinker! The campaign has also seen some public-relations tie-ins, coordinated by O&M PR, in various countries. Earlier this year, the "Mirinda Motorcade" came to Malaysia, Singapore and Bangkok. The motorcade comprises four Looney Tunes cars: the Bugs Bunny Limo, the Daffy Duck Dragster, the Road Runner Rocket and the Sylvester Catillac. In a sense, the cars are Warner Bros.'s version of the famous "BMW Art Cars". During exhibitions in each city, the motorcade includes magic shows, music request booths, photo-taking sessions with Bugs and fellow cartoon stars, children's plays and cartoon shows. The motorcade is sponsored by Mirinda Orange. "This is a model case study of a totally integrated campaign," says Wilken. "It's brand image-led, with aggressive sales-promotion and public relations activities."
