I don’t know much about New Zealand. What little I know comes from Flight of the Conchords and the early movies of Peter Jackson, so my appreciation of Kiwi culture leans heavily toward novelty songs and zombie babies.

Last week I got the opportunity to learn a little more. We have a new partner for our group buying platform:

Cartoon seem familiar? One of the perks partners receive when they sign up with VendAsta’s Daily Deal Platform 3S is their very own branded, customized, and colour-coordinated video. We’re such sticklers for detail that we even determined to give the voiceover an authentic New Zealand accent.

At first we thought we could get Scott, our Australian-in-residence, to supply the voice. But it turns out there’s a difference between the Aussie drawl and the Kiwi twang, which Scott illustrated by playing us this video:

…Of which we understood not a word.

So we had to find a real New Zealander. But as you might expect, the supply of Kiwi voice actors in Saskatoon is pretty limited. After soliciting help on Twitter we got word of a recent immigrant named Chris who, it was rumoured, had done a little acting back in his high school days in Whakatane.

(Incidentally, in words derived from the Maori language the “wh” is pronounced as “f”. That was an interesting conversation:

ME: So, whereabouts in New Zealand did you grow up?

CHRIS: Fock-a-tawny.

ME: Fock-a-what? How do you spell that?

CHRIS: W…H…

ME: Whaaa…?)

Everyone’s pretty pleased with how the voiceover turned out. We got word from our partner that Chris has “a great Kiwi accent…not too rural, but not too soft either.”

But he’s not just a pretty voice. Chris also helped us revise our script. In the North American version we say:

If the target isn’t reached by the end of the day, the deal is cancelled, and no-one pays a dime.

It seems that in New Zealand they don’t call them “dimes” – they’re just called “ten cent pieces”. So Chris changed the line to “no-one pays a cent”. We paid for an actor and got a copy editor for free!

Anyway, if you’re looking for great bargains in New Zealand, check out Whlocking…sorry, Flocking Good Deals, coming soon to Auckland and other towns.