When I was a kid, soft drinks, fast-food joints, candy, cereal, shoes*, moving companies, insurance companies – they all had jingles in their commercials.
I can’t remember the last time I heard a good jingle.
What happened?
*Come to a Philly Dopefest and I’ll sing the Buster Brown song for you in its entirety.
I was kind of wondering that, too. I was watching an old Cheers ep where John Mahoney plays a jingle writer that Rebecca Howe hires to do some advertising for Cheers, and I remember thinking that I couldn’t recall any jingles. Not any recent ones. It feels nowadays like the trend is taking already famous songs and putting them in the background, or a cover song of a famous song. I can’t think of any songs written just for ads, though.
Commercials are shorter – 15-30 seconds as opposed to a minute when the jingle was king. That’s not enough time to do a memorable jingle.
Also, advertising philosophy has changed. In the 50s and 60s, the idea was that you told people about the product – the features that you believed would make them buy. Now, it’s all done visually, using exciting images and quick cuts. There’s less need to sing the praises of a product.
In addition, using a familiar tune works just as well as a jingle, with the added advantage is that people recognize it at once.
The equivalent is not to use songs written for the commercial, but to use songs to set the mood. Moby’s career took off when he licensed his songs for use in commercials. They didn’t mention anything about the product, but the music made the commercial memorable,
they seem to be part of or themes of tv commercials.
These days individuals don’t view a commercial enough times to make it worthwhile to commission a jingle. Better to hit them with a pop tune they’re already familiar with.
I think " Studio 360" or “This American Life” did a show on this.
In an episode of Two and a Half Men Charlie Sheen’s character (who is a jingle writer) mentions that the market’s dried up because it’s cheaper for companies to use classic rock songs. Dunno if that’s really what’s behind it, but after that I started to pay attention, and it certainly seems to describe the reality of current advertising.
Buster Brown, Slinky, Honeycomb, Digger the Dog, Perfection, Levis (haw haw…), Good ‘n’ Plenty, The Millford Plaza…I’ll gladly sing any or all of 'em.
Studio 360 – studio360.org/episodes/2008/01/04
It seems to me that jingles are more common in local and cable ads, maybe because the advertisers don’t have the money to license a Led Zeppelin song. But I don’t know if that’s really the case.
About half of all local commercials on local radio stations around here have jingles, but they all sound the same, and none are catchy; it’s just studio singers singing a long jingle in a soft Adult Contemporary style. Most of the businesses that have jingles really shouldn’t have them, either. You hear stuff along the lines of:
♫ Niaaaagara Colostomy Supplyyyyy!
We caaaare a-bout youuuuu!" ♫
or …
♫ We’re theeeere when you need uuuuus!
Frontieeeeer Cane and Walkeeeeeer! ♫
or …
♫ You can count on ussssss! For your walker neeeeeds!
Seneca … Seneca Cane and Crutch! ♫
Okay, none of those jingles actually exist. The real ones are so forgettable, defeating the purpose of a jingle to egin with.
‘Jingles’ died in 1977.
There ARE jingles, still…they’re just really, really short.
KFC: “G-double-O-D Good!”
McDonalds: “Ba da ba BA ba! I’m lovin’ it!”
I’m sure jingles would still work. The last one I can recall is “Mr Plow, Mr Plow, that name again is Mr Plow”. Not even a real product, yet it stuck. It only takes 5 seconds for the hook to catch. They don’t have to be little operas. But words sung to a tune makes the words stick, even if it is only a Pizza delivery phone number sung to the William Tell Overture.
But that may be the problem. Ads now are not about something as functional as remembering a phone number or the actual name of a business except for purely local products that need cutthrough and awareness that they exist.
Ads for a huge international product are about branding at an almost subconscious level, at which point remembered content is practically irrelevant. It’s all about mood and style. “Always Coca-Cola” was a jingle that did not want any actual informational content, because there is no point in content in ads for Coke - it is about the timelessness of a product that has always been there and always will.
Once that realisation sets in, the next logical step is to recognise that a purpose-written jingle risks actually diminishing the product by making it seem parochial, when it wants to look above mere scrabbling for sales.
But I still loves me a good old-time jingle. Those 50s era anonymous girl group jingles were great. And what Australian can’t remember Aeroplane Jelly or Happy Little Vegemites?
1-877-Kars-4-Kids, K-A-R-S-Kars-4-Kids.
Does that count? Does anyone know what I’m talking about? If so, do they want to kill me now?
I youtubed it, puly. It kind of reminds me of “Hush little baby, don’t say a word…mockingbird…etc.”
The best use for jingles ever.
The same thing has happened to theme songs for TV shows. Iconic, original themes are rare these days.
I just saw one for Burger King.
It’s morning, I’m hungry,
gonna go to Burger King
Burger King for breakfast?
Yes, there’s such a thing.
Breakfast, new breakfast
no reason to delay.
Breakfast bowls and platters
Hip, hip, hooray!
Yummy! Yummy! Yummy!
Tummy! Tummy! Tummy!
Yummy! Tummy!
Yummy! Yummy! Tummy!
With a bunch of great new items
have breakfast Your Way!
Fast food chicken place Bojangles has a short jingle. “Gotta, Wanta, Needa, Hava Bojangles!”
GAAHH!!
For some reason I hate this with an irrational intensity. It’s lame and generic. You could stick this at the end of any commercial for any product, so what’s the point? I can’t explain why I feel so strongly about this, but it just bugs the living crap out of me.
It’s been more than 30 years, but I still clearly recall Colonel Sanders himself looking at the camera and singing:
Kentucky Fried Chicken
If you want Kentucky Fried Chicken
You’ll have to visit meeee!
Simple, memorable, and effective.
We’ve quite a few in the UK.