The best jingles are the catchy tunes that you can’t get out of your head. Maybe it’s the cat food jingle that runs in a constant loop in the back of your mind. It could be the one about the pizza place down the street or the mattress store around the corner. Whatever product or service the jingle is for, if you can recite it verbatim, the writer did a great job.
When you need a jingle, you need great advertising and a fun song with rhythms that appeal to a wide audience. But there is a strategy behind it. It’s not just a silly children’s song. What are the essentials for an effective, successful jingle?
First of all, your jingle needs to be consistent with the rest of your advertising media. If you have implemented a slogan on your business cards or informational brochures, then it makes sense that you would want to use that to create a layering effect. The words that are already associated with you and your company will be reinforced with your new jingle. There’s no need to re-invent the wheel if you don’t have to.
Next, you will need to consider where and when your jingle will be played and create music that is appropriate to the audience and venue. For example, if the jingle is meant to accompany a television commercial at 3 am on cable channels, you may have more freedom of word choice and subject matter. If your client base is the drive time crowd who rarely watch television but are generally in their cars listening to the radio on the way home from work at 5pm, then you are slightly more restricted as far as the amount of time you may purchase, but certainly repetition will be more effective than on late night television.
Contact the radio station or stations as well as the television station or stations ahead of time and request guidelines for your advertisement and jingle. Their restrictions may help provide the structure you need to create a solid jingle for your company.
Though word of mouth advertising can be effective in generating new clientele for your business, rarely is this successful enough to be relied upon. The jingle, however, is in a sense, a word of mouth venture. By staging your jingle as the advice of another customer that your potential client identifies with or as the recommendation of an authority figure (i.e. doctor, CEO, community leader), you gain some of the power generally created by word of mouth.
Another necessity for a successful jingle is the need for it to promote the benefits of your product or service instead of its features. For example, you’ve never heard a cat food commercial that sing – songs the ingredients list off the back of bag. The song is about the happy, healthy cat that happens as a result of purchasing that particular brand of cat food. Apply this thinking to the 30 seconds or less you have to create a jingle for your business and you will generate a larger client load than if you simply describe what your product or service can do.
The last basic necessity for a great jingle comes before you even pick up the pen – know the competition. Know who your geographic competition is, who takes business from you online, and how they promote themselves. Keep up with their sales patterns, their promotions and, yes, their jingles and commercials. How often do they change them? When and where do they advertise? Who seems to be their target audience? Then consider how can you use all of this information to create a jingle that will knock them out of your way.
This is a lot to think about for one 30 second spot, especially if you have been asked to come up with multiple jingles, even multiple jingles for multiple companies. Maybe you’ve gotten all of the above nailed down, but when it comes to the actual writing of the jingle, you don’t know where to begin. Or you don’t want to. That’s where Sassy Slogans comes in. You can get back to the rest of your workload instead of staring at a pile of research and a blank piece of paper, waiting for lightning to strike.
At Sassy Slogans, we know what makes a successful jingle. By letting us take on this less than appealing aspect of your job, you can be sure that you will have a great finished product to take back to the boss by deadline – with time to spare!
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