Jingles have been around as an advertising form about as long as radio. In the days when radio broadcast entertainment segments were done live, so were the jingles. No different from today, some of the early users of the format were breakfast cereal producers – Cream of Wheat was on the air in the thirties with a full fledged rhyming jingle. Jingles and breakfast cereal go well, because jingles appeal to kids. Tony the Tiger singing “They're GREAT!” was one of the early versions of a multitude of cartoon characters crooning about the virtues of a number of cereals.
Food has always been a focus for the jingle; perhaps from the soap-opera, housewife-at-home era. Campbell 's soup has been “M-mm M-mm Good” for at least forty years, and probably more. “I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Weiner…” was a perennial that was on the airwaves for decades. One example of a food oriented jingle that works equally well on screen as on the radio is the Chicken of the Sea tuna spot with the great image: “Ask any mermaid you happen to see…” It's an interesting test to ask how many people can finish some of the jingles mentioned in this article, as many of them have been off the air for years.
Although it's often in humorous fashion, it's worth noting that every one of those jingles inserts the listener into the lyric. Whether it's tasting, or wishing, or asking the listener has a role. Another evergreen that took the same tack was the Doublemint Gum campaign that implored the listener to “Double your pleasure, double your fun…”
Jingles are, in a sense, slogans set to music. The use of rhyme and melody, however, makes a jingle more likely to stick in one's memory. It is often a clever use of words set to music and shaped into a rhyme that is designed to burrow its way into your brain.
An example of a somewhat obtuse jingle that may have finally accomplished that chore after an ad campaign of several years is the U.S. Army's “Be all that you can be.” Here was a jingle, and a campaign, that introduced the product almost as an afterthought, and for good reason. The goal of the all-volunteer Army's ad campaign was not only to make it appear as a career-shaping opportunity, but also to set to rest years of image problems as an antiquated organization that was a source of refuge for young misfits.
The Army effort was interesting also in that it built a series of TV campaigns around the same jingle. The little tune rhyming “…you can be…” with “Army” was the center of theme of many, many television commercials that often rolled out the jingle as the spot's closing high point.
We at Sassy Slogans understand the sticking power of jingles and the multitude of ways in which they can be utilized in an advertising effort. Sassy Slogans is capable of creating a jingle that will match up with a graphics campaign on the web television or in print. We can also throw the creative machine in reverse: we'll create a jingle that can complement or even highlight an existing branding effort.
At the moment, television and radio are the primary outlets for jingles. Very shortly, internet software and the increasing power of our computers are going to make aural advertising a part of the internet. There is no doubt that this new application for jingles will bring a more sophisticated humor and intricate use of sound and graphics to the genre. At Sassy Slogans, we'll be ready.
>>Back To Home |
