It’s 1:33 pm and you haven’t eaten lunch yet. You say to yourself, “I need to get something quick. I’m starving!” You open up your wallet and immediately worry because you only have $5.00 in there. Then, out of nowhere, your brain just starts singing “Five … five dollar … five dollar foot longggggg.” What just happened? Not only can you now go get a delicious $5.00 foot long sub from Subway, but your mind just recalled a catchy jingle. It worked just at the time you needed it and at the time that Subway wanted it to happen.
Creating a jingle is a classic marketing technique that still works. Jingles are written to be catchy, memorable, and easy to sing. The shorter and more repetitive they are, the better they work. The best jingles are the ones that contain earworms. Most frequently found in pop songs, earworms are the 15 to 30 second pieces of music that you can’t get out of your head even if you try (i.e. “We Will Rock You” by Queen). Even if you think the earworms are gone, they aren’t because a simple phrase or melody can bring back the song very easily. The pleasant, memorable melodies and easy-to-remember phrases and rhymes are difficult to forget.
Catchy jingles have been around since the 1920’s when radio commercials came about. In 1926, the first jingle was publicly heard. A cappella group called the Wheaties Quartet sang a catchy tune about Wheaties. General Mills was about to discontinue the brand, but once executives noticed a spike in popularity in the regions it aired, the company decided to play the jingle nationally. Sales grew rapidly, and eight years later Wheaties was in a majority of kitchens around the world.
As the years went on, jingles continued to grow in popularity and began to incorporate slogans and more artistic features from actual jingle composers rather than the manufacturing companies. Almost 90 years later, jingles are still being used and entering in the subconscious of potential customers’ heads. Just to bring about a past ear worm, here are a few of the catchiest jingles (I apologize in advance for getting these stuck in your head):
- “Ba-da ba ba ba, I’m Lovin’ It” – McDonalds
- “Don’t you wanna, wanna Fanta?” – Fanta
- “Double your pleasure, double your fun” – Doublemint Gum
- “Give me a break, give me a break, break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar” – Kit Kat
- “Dinggg, ding-ding, ding-ding” – Intel
- “F-R-E-E, that spells Free-credit report .com baby” – Freecreditreport.com (several variations)
- “My bologna has a first name it’s O-S-C-A-R” – Oscar Mayer
Can you think of any more catchy jingles?