Memorable Jingles, Themes Lead Brands, Content Through Media Jungle
The TV landscape is a jungle for TV content producers, distributors, brand marketers and consumers. What do I watch? Where do I watch it? What did I just watch? What was the product in that commercial I just watched, and why do I have to keep seeing it? Maybe an answer to our video woes lies in our oldest form of communication – sound.
It may be that what’s old – really old – can be new again. Audio had a pretty good head start for human beings long before words and pictures emerged. Humans depended on sounds to tell them how to avoid danger and to recognize the cry of their own children. As Jews around the world gather to celebrate the Jewish New Year this week, they’ll again hear the call of the shofar (ram’s horn) which first resonated thousands of years ago. Melodies from our past summon indelible memories of people, places, and milestones in our lives.
373019 02: A 1955 Ford, left, and a 1955 Oldsmobile are parked in the lot of the McDonald's museum July 14, 2000 in Des Plaines, IL. On this site April 15, 1955 Ray Kroc, founder of the McDonald's franchise, opened his first restaurant. 45 years later McDonald's Corporation is the largest and best-known food service retailer with nearly 28,000 restaurants serving more than 43 million people a day in 119 countries. (Photo by Tim Boyle/Newsmakers) Getty Images
Ad Age, a leading ad-industry publication, recently trumpeted the revival of brand jingles, citing the faux-Broadway musical production in Jardiance commercials. They might well have also pointed to “Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic” which I have stuck in my head despite never using or intending to use the product. Of course, this isn’t exactly a novel strategy. According to Michele Arnese, founder and CEO of WPP’s amp sound branding, a leader in developing sonic “identities,” the jingle dates back at least to 1926 with a radio spot for Wheaties. And I’d be willing to bet that more than a few readers here might remember commercial ditties from decades past such as Coca-Cola (“I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”), McDonald’s (“Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce” and “I’m lovin’ it”), Oscar Meyer (“I’d love to be an Oscar Meyer wiener”), and Nationwide (“is on your side”). Barry Manilow created an entire medley of his greatest commercial “hits” from KFC, State Farm and more.
Jingles are merely one subset of the larger field of “sonic branding.” What’s a sonic brand? Think of Intel inside, the sound when Netflix comes on (“ta-dum”), or the three musical notes for the NBC network (“G-E-C” actually, which GE execs used to love). The right jingle shouldn’t be just a cute song but fit more broadly into a brand’s broader sound strategy and authentic nature and connect meaningfully to the consumer.
Two veteran industry leaders, Arnese at amp sound branding and Joel Beckerman, the founder and CEO of Made Music Studio and an accomplished composer in his own right, both spoke to me of how sonic branding is rooted in neuroscience. Audio, working at a subconscious rather than conscious level of the mind, has a much greater impact on the brain and a greater likelihood of changing human behavior. Arnese referenced a 2020 study from Ipsos that found audio branding drove brand attention 8.5X that for visual brand logos. And Arnese further observed that “sound is far more flexible than video,” with one foundational piece of music containing elements far more adaptable than video to a variety of linear TV, radio, social media, and digital audio platforms. That’s vital when, as Beckerman noted, CMOs that might have once been responsible for producing 1000 different pieces of content might now have to crank out 50,000.
