is the commercial jingle dead?

you know the jingle; it told you what name your bologna had and it helped you realize that if you were a wiener, what kind of wiener you would like to be. these days i’m noticing a trend: the death of the jingle. let’s start first to define what i believe the jingle to be, “a short song encapsulated in a commercial that defines a product, what a product offers, or whom the product is tailored for”. it also has a sticking-factor that embedded it into your brain and bugged you when you were trying to sleep. you might have other ideas of what a jingle is, but i don’t care. well i do, but for consistency-sake we’ll just stick with my definition.

when growing up the jingle was a staple of the advertising world. it made me want to buy, no, need to buy something. it made me need something so bad that i would nag my mother incessantly until i got said product. nowadays the jingle seems to have gone the way of the dodo in advertising, with the exception of a few ‘old world’ products from conglomerate companies.

what i find most interesting is that in today’s youtube world of a.d.d. kids and adults the jingle has never found a place. i just don’t think we care enough that someone has crafted a song to specifically tell a product’s story. here’s a small sample of the 3 commercials that have really grabbed me as still being the only ones to have a jingle:

• campbell’s condensed soup
• kraft macaroni and cheese
• kellogg’s cereal (moreover cereal straws)

for campbell’s they expound on the ‘possibilities’ of using their product. ‘our condensed soup will not only save you time, but make it easy to load your family up with lots sodium’.

kraft macaroni and cheese, where do i begin? first off the commercial seemed to be demographically targeted. also, the lyrics of the jingle include such gems as “momma’s in the kitchen, sister’s in a dress; they all come running for the cheesiest”. i’ll let you fill in your own comments.

this is marketing genius. the cereal straws are ‘different’ than regular straws. they have a catchy little diddy, “just dip ‘em in and sip sip sip, ‘sip sip’; just pull ‘em out and munch munch munch”. kids will love the fun and flavor of these and parents will love the bevy of things in the straws like: yellow #6, red #40, yellow #5, and blue #1.

now this to me is an example of the larger conglomerate companies that haven’t adapted their marketing styles to embrace this new buying generation. what’s interesting is that brands such as disney and wheat thins (which is a nabisco brand and a subsidiary of kraft) use popular music, written by others, that fit their product and excite the consumer. disney chose ‘time machine’ from the click five and wheat thins chose ‘tell me what you want’ by the pipettes for their latest commercials. both have catchy tunes and place their product squarely in front the consumer. apple is known for using indie artists to showcase a product, which they did yet again with isreali artist yeal naim‘s ‘new soul’ for their macbook air campaign.

it seems as though these larger companies haven’t gotten on board with what makes consumers buy products. here’s a tip: if the song is actually good, as is the case with ‘new soul’, consumers will buy the song and the process of product association is now permanent. think about it; every time you hear ‘new soul’ you will think about the macbook air, even if you can’t afford to buy one.

don’t try and reinvent the wheel people; find a new way to make people love the vulcanized rubber they drive on. and the next time i am hungover and looking for some mac & cheese i won’t give a damn that the jingle told me what this girl’s sister was wearing or where in the house her mother was located. i just want the product.