Who Stopped the Marketing Music?

When was the last time you heard a truly memorable advertising jingle? One that you simply couldn’t stop humming and that you heard repeated wherever you went, with even kids on the street singing it to each other.

One look at this list from the Branding Strategy Insider and the dates they were introduced and you can guess it was probably about the time ad agency types such as the fictional Darrin Stevens and the rest of the “Mad Men” retired to Florida in the early 80′s. Only two from the list were from the 1990′s, and one was the four note Intel Inside tones, which barely qualifies as a true jingle in my mind.

I do have a belief (which I’m open for a challenge) that as media moved from being auditory dominant (radio) to more visual dominant (TV), the skill sets of ad agency creative talent shifted as well. We got visually stunning commercials, but the auditory complement was usually a pop song. But using popular music is expensive and it generally has stronger links back to the original artist that the brand it is advertising (“Like a Rock” for Chevy being a notable exception).

When I think about the emerging discipline of neuromarketing, I can’t help but wonder why marketers and their ad agency partners walked away from jingles. Although the medium is dated, I can’t think of any other form of equity communication that did a better job of cementing a brand into one’s brain than jingles did.