TikTok — one of the most popular social media and video platforms on the internet — has become a place for people to show off their talents. Cleveland native Stefan Johnson used TikTok to help accelerate his career as a voiceover artist.
Johnson has Lou Rawls-esque dulcet tones and he considers himself a “foodie.” Put the two together and he can make simple bar food sound gourmet.
“They’re crispy. They’re crunchy. You can fill it with bacon, sour cream, cheese, chives. The possibilities are endless and I never want this flavor ride to end,” Johnson said emphatically over dramatic music about a potato skin in one of his TikTok videos.
Johnson will rate foods, rank food and sometimes he will record himself trying foods for the first time. He’ll talk about food he loves and food he doesn’t love. Sometimes his culinary takes will cause a stir amongst his 7.5 million TikTok followers.
“Food creates a lot of strong opinions. I just love seeing the conversation,” Johnson said. “Anytime I talk about my apparently unique take on pouring the milk before the cereal … people go ballistic.”
In his first viral TikTok video, he rated french fries from different fast food restaurants.
“One day after posting it, not thinking anything of it, that video had like 100,000 views. And that was just 24 hours,” Johnson said.
Johnson wanted to be a voiceover artist since he was a young teenager — around the time his voice started getting deeper. He made voiceover work his full-time career about three years ago, but the gigs and job offers really started to pick up after his TikTok videos started going viral in 2020.
“I would attest part of it to getting eyes on myself via the TikTok clout and the TikTok notoriety," he said. "But I would hope that it’s my personality and talent that makes them say, ‘Oh, yeah, we really want this guy.’”
Johnson’s voice is in commercials and promotional videos for big companies, such as McDonald’s, Gillette and Bally Sports. He’s in movies. He has partnerships with some big-time brands, including Planters, Buffalo Wild Wings and Meta. Whether he likes it or not, he’s become a celebrity.
“That word makes me cringe. I don’t think of myself as a celebrity at all. When I go outside and people recognize me … I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m just a guy,’” Johnson said. “It’s just very jarring, but in a good way.”
Perhaps the person who gets most excited to hear a Stefan Johnson-voiced commercial is his wife, Rica Johnson.
“Seeing him just going from where he started to now, it’s really amazing. Just last week I heard him on the radio actually and I’m like, ‘That’s you,’” Rica Johnson said with a laugh.
Stefan Johnson credits his wife with giving him the ability to take a chance on this career path years ago.
“She has been by North Star with all of this. Part of the reason why I was even able to do what I did going full time with any of this is because I knew she had my back. Because I could have jumped off that cliff and fell flat on my face and she would have picked me up,” Stefan Johnson said.
Stefan Johnson grew up in Hough, a predominately Black East Side Cleveland neighborhood that, for decades, has struggled against the effects of white flight, redlining and poverty.
“There’s a lot of talent in the neighborhood. There’s a lot of folks that have so much potential, but sometimes are limited by the resources. I have folks that will come up to me like, ‘I heard you grew up on Hough. I’m on Hough right now and seeing what you’re doing, it lets me know that there’s a way out of here,’” Johnson said. “To hear that I may potentially inspire someone to make those moves, I’ve literally brought myself to tears thinking about that sometimes.”
Most of the work Johnson does – even for the nationally aired productions – he can do right from the audio and video studios he built in his Cleveland home.
“People are like, ‘Oh my god you’re from Cleveland. I feel bad for you. Why are you not in LA? Why are you not in New York? Why didn’t you move?’ And I get offended,” Johnson said.
Johnson often proudly wears Cleveland garb or eats at Ohio specific restaurants in his TikTok videos.
“I may go to Vegas or New York or ATL every once in a while, but no, my home base is Cleveland, Ohio and I don’t plan on going anywhere,” Johnson said. “This city has so many talented musicians, actresses, doctors, historians, chefs, beauticians, athletes … mega stars are built here.”
And the latest mega star is a voiceover artist who spends a lot of time debating cereals and french fries on TikTok.
