Jingles

Remember jingles? I love jingles. Unfortunately, jingles went away back in the eighties. Someone, everyone decided they were hokey, I guess. And hokey, as we all know, is cardinal sin number one in advertising. Instead, these days we get Fat Boy Slim, who won’t become hokey for a few years yet.

I like jingles because they’re little songs, and the good ones were good enough to be hit songs in their own right, like the oft-invoked We’ve Only Just Begun and I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing. Jingles are potent little time machines, evoking the entire feel and mood of a time in our lives. My favorite jingle had no singing in it. It was called No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach’s In). It was for Alka-Seltzer, and it made the Top 40, back when there was a Top 40, and back when an instrumental could be in it.

The term “jingle”, like the entity it names, seems hopelessly dated. This is sad. I’m pretty sure that jingles died largely because of that name. I wonder what the etymology of the “jingle” is anyway. Does anybody out there know?

I think if we can just come up with a better name for commercial songs, they will come back. All you music guys out there, you must have thought about this. What’s the answer? Aditties maybe? Or Crassongs? What should jingles be called that will allow them to return? Hey Ruth, let’s do a contest to give jingles a new name. My best suggestion is “Spotoons”. Top that, all you oh so clever copy wizards.

One of the last jingles I loved was, fittingly, for a dying product, the typewriter. Specifically, IBM typerwriters. The jingle was We’re Your Type. It was a very evocative pop song. Dare I say it was almost . . . touching? I always meant to find out who did that jingle so I could get a copy just to listen to. Does anybody out there know?

The situation is, perhaps, not entirely hopeless. Coca-Cola has always kept its hand in. Pepsi has a good new song out. So does Ford. That Click Dial Click jingle for Ameritech a while back, was very nicely done. As was Softer Side of Sears (which, alas, is going away). Even jingles that make you cringe and flip, (Put Your 900 On, KitchenAid, For The Way It’s Made) and recently reprised golden oldies (I am stuck on Band-Aids, I’m Chiquita Banana, Dr Pepper, so misunderstood ) give me hope that the corpse may be stirring.

For the most part, however, we continue to suffer the facile, sans-a-concept torture of hearing real, already existing hit songs being bastardized, dragged into service as commercials. Real songs, often nice safe oldies, the lyrics of which might or might not possess some tenuous strand of relevance to the product. Gee, what a fresh approach to advertising. Choose a word that relates to the product. Go to your computer and call up some song title program. Enter the word. Take your choice from the titles that pop up. Presto. Instant commercial. Problem is, it renders the copywriter redundant, obsolete, whorish. So easy, an art director could do it. In fact, it’s so easy, art directors often do do it. Baker’s Square’s Whole Lot of Bakin’ goin’ on, for instance, sprang from the head of an art director.

The already-existing song comes with its own hard-earned power to evoke certain emotions and memories in the hearts and minds of the unsuspecting audience. Using songs in this way strikes me as the crassest form of manipulative borrowed interest. I, for one, deeply resent when an advertiser co-opts some Motown classic or a song by the Beatles, the Who or the Stones (why do I so willingly grant immunity to Apple for its use of the Stone’s She a Rainbow for iMac, which is perfect somehow?), which was inextricably woven into the memory fabric of my past. I loved those songs. I hate that they’re being abused and poisoned for me forever by advertising agents who spend a pretty penny for the rights to my emotional tie to those songs. How often, and in how many ways, can they desecrate I Feel Good and its ilk? And don’t even get me started on parody lyrics.

I know. I know. Anything goes since Nixon was pardoned and Clinton acquitted. But I hate it anyway. How is this larcenous, lazy, heinous practice any different than using a chesty bimbo to sell auto parts? Borrowed interest is borrowed interest, regardless of whether it’s visual or aural interest, or how politically correct the interest may be.
DIGRESSION: I’ve struggled with the whole concept of borrowed interest ever since I got into the business. How are those swamp creatures in beer commercials any less borrowed interest than that aforementioned chesty bimbo? And what about celebrity endorsers? Why is that borrowed interest okay? It seems that borrowed interest is invoked very selectively by Creative Directors and such, as a reason to kill an idea. Depending on whose agenda it serves. When is it okay? And why? Somebody explain it to me. In the mean time, please, I’m begging all of you writers, make an effort on your next assignment to have a real, genuine idea. One that taps into actual emotions that are somehow germaine to the consumer, the particular product and the relationship between the two. Above all, spare me the obvious, cheap and easy, no-brain pseudo-solution of rehashing twenty-five year old Top 40 hits.

As computers continue to alter every aspect of our business, we’ve failed to teach young art directors how to use computers as a tool rather than a crutch. We’ve failed to educate clients about changes in the process and thereby failed to manage their expectations. As we play with our new toy, we’ve been short-sighted and self-indulgent. It’s time to stop shooting ourselves in the foot with our nice, shiny gigabyte bazooka. In a future column, I will offer some suggestions on how to disarm ourselves.