“Plop, Plop …”
“Fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is.” I KNOW that if not all then the vast majority of you said the second line in your heads as soon as you read the title of today’s column. And why not? The Alka-Seltzer commercial jingle ran for over a decade and is ranked the thirteenth most popular commercial jingle of all time by Advertising Age. Which is the most popular commercial jingle? I’ll tell you, right after these words.
Thanks to that jingle, we know that Alka-Seltzer provides relief. Thanks to other jingles we also know that Coke is the real thing, the best part of waking up is Folger’s in your cup (yours, anyway—not mine), and special orders don’t upset the workers at Burger King, just to mention three. Speaking of Coke, I have occasionally wondered if I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfectly harmony, and have often wondered just how many people would be able to correctly spell “bologna” without the repeated lesson given by Oscar Meyer. The mind boggles.
Jingles haven’t quite died, but their popularity has waned to the point where, at least compared to the 1950s through the 1990s, they are very few and far between. In my occasionally humble opinion, the Liberty Mutual jingle we hear on television (the name “Liberty” being repeated four times by an a cappella melody) must have been pitched by the most convincing marketing consultant of all time. But, to be fair, this simple jingle ranks very high for consumer awareness by marketing researchers. An interesting coincidence is that another very high-ranking jingle is State Farm’s (written by Barry Manilow) which, like Liberty Mutual, promotes an insurance company. So, exactly why don’t we hear jingles today as we had years ago? Why are there so few compared to years past? Do they no longer have the impact of before? (Note, I refer to nationally advertised products and services only.)
There are a few theories that offer explanations for the so-called end of jingledom. One claims that consumerism isn’t anything like what it was, and jingles sound old-fashioned to a market that craves the new and bold. Another popular theory is that Michael Jackson’s presence in the 1984 Pepsi campaign established a new standard of using the popular and famous to identify with a product rather than relying on a catchy tune. A third one points out that with so many of us watching shows and promoted videos that allow us to skip commercials, why invest in a team to create jingles relatively few will hear?
To be honest, I kinda miss jingles. Which leads me to offering you a game. I will now list parts of jingles, in some cases leaving out key identifying words. The list should be fairly easy, but hopefully has a couple of entries that will prove more challenging. See how many you recall. The answers are toward the end of the column, but no fair peeking!
1. “ … is on your side.”
2. “I’d like to buy the world a … and keep it company”
3. “Give me a break, give me a break.”
4. “Here’s to good friends, tonight is kind of special.”
5. “Five. Five. Five-dollar …”
6. “Look on the lilypad! A …! Catch him, catch him, ca-ca-c-c-c-catch him. Ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-catch him!’”
7. “We’re gonna do this together! We’re gonna stick to the plan, do everything we can to make it easy and fun.”
8. “I am stuck on … ‘cause … stuck on me.”
9. “I’m lovin’ it, is this the place to eat? Since I don’t cook, I’ll just rock to the beat.”
10. “Five-eight-eight, two-three-hundred …”
11. “Double your pleasure, double your fun.”
12. “For all you do, this … for you.”
13. “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.”
14. “Nobody doesn’t like …”
15. “A little dab’ll do ya.”
16. “If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the beer.”
17. “You’ll wonder where the yellow went.”
18. “There’s a wonderful world of softness.”
19. “The world looks mighty good to me, ‘cause … are all I see.”
20. “They’re crispy and crunchy the whole year through. The kiddies never tire of them and neither will you.”
Did you remember most of them? Here are the answers:
- Nationwide Insurance
- Coca-Cola
- Kit-Kat candy bars
- Lowenbrau beer
- Subway sandwiches
- Lucky Charms cereal
- Huggies disposable diapers
- Band-aids
- McDonald’s
- Empire carpeting
- Doublemint gum
- Budweiser beer
- Almond Joy and Mounds candy bars
- Sara Lee cakes
- Brylcreem
- Miller beer
- Pepsodent toothpaste
- Salem cigarettes
- Tootsie Roll candy
- Did you remember or guess at number 20? This one is interesting if only because it was the first national product jingle and it debuted on Christmas Eve, 1926. The parent company was all set to drop the item from production and focus on other things it made because sales had plummeted everywhere. Everywhere?
Not everywhere. In one market—the Minneapolis-St. Paul area—the product sold an astonishingly high number of boxes and the only difference was in how it was promoted there. The public really liked a song for the product they heard on the radio that was sung by a barbershop quartet comprised of an undertaker, a printer, a court bailiff, and a businessman. When the company aired the song in other markets, sales went up. And when the song went national, sales skyrocketed, other companies took notice, and jingles became ubiquitous. The company is General Mills, and the product is Wheaties.
Now that you know which was the original jingle, do you know which is the longest-running jingle? Still around today, albeit harder to find, the Slinky jingle has been running since 1962, which gives it the number one spot for durability.
“What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound? A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it’s Slinky. It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky. For fun it’s a wonderful toy. It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky. It’s fun for a girl or a boy. It’s fun for a girl or boy!”
As for the number 1 ad, according to Advertising Age, that honor goes to McDonald’s for the “You Deserve a Break Today” jingle.
Hmmm, I wonder if we could come up with a jingle for SUUS? Send me your ideas and we’ll run them up this column’s flagpole to see who salutes.
This week’s Street Advertising Smile:
