How advertising jingles influence our purchasing choices (and why we’re still singing them decades later)

Familiar songs often stay with you forever, even if you haven’t heard them in years. We often remember all the lyrics to a song we learned as a child or an album we admired as a teenager. But beyond the music we deliberately choose to listen to or learn from, there is one type of music that sticks with us without any effort: jingles.

Jingles have a long history in the advertising industry. Britain’s first known radio jingle, “Have you tried flour?”, was released in 1926. Since then, jingles have become a major feature of our daily life.

Recent market research has revealed that some of the 10 best-known jingles for UK adults date back 30 or even 40 years. Comparison site Go Compare tops the list, while Mars’ “Work, Rest, Play” jingle (discontinued in the mid-1990s) and even Shake & Vac’s “Reclaim Freshness” (1980) It’s still floating around in people’s heads. People who were voted.

So why do these songs stick in our minds? And how does this affect what we buy?

Jingles are memorable in many different ways. Some advertisers take familiar songs that are memorable in nature and use them in new contexts. For example, the “Go Compare” jingle uses the traditional song “Over There” and combines it with the comical visual elements of a flamboyant opera singer. The “Just One Cornetto” campaign (launched in 1981) similarly takes a classic melody (O Sole Mio) and tweaks it to sell ice cream.

Other jingles use musical elements that tend to be “earworms” and are songs you’ll get stuck in your head, whether you like it or not. In a study examining a large collection of pop music, my team found that songs that are likely to give you earworms are up-tempo and often have tempos that make you want to dance along. Many jingles fit this pattern, such as “Do the Shake ‘n’ Vac” and “I Feel like Chicken Tonight.”

In fact, other studies have shown that when people move or sing along to a catchy song, they’re more likely to subsequently experience that song as an earworm. It has also been found that attaching an earworm to a song you recently learned can help you remember the song better later.

Lyrics can also play an important role in the memory of a song or product. The alliterative lyrics of “Maybe it’s Maybelline” make it easy for consumers who have never heard of the brand to remember the name the next time they are in the store.

Links to other periods of life

It’s not just the musical characteristics that make jingles so ingrained in our memories. Music tends to be closely related to the context in which we hear it. That is, it is often closely intertwined with autobiographical memories of our lives.

So when we hear a jingle from our childhood, it not only brings back the memories of hearing that song, but also the memories of the living room where we grew up and the feeling of sitting around the TV and watching it with our family. . Therefore, jingles can be a powerful trigger to evoke nostalgia.

Research has shown that our most vivid memories tend to be between the ages of 10 and 25. Musical cues are also great for triggering memories from this period, known as “reminiscence bumps.”

In line with this, the same consumer survey also revealed that jingle recognition rates differed by age group. For example, for Millennials, McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it” ranks No. 2 on the list of most popular jingles, and “Maybe it’s Maybelline” comes in at No. 5.

Some brands explicitly aim to combine this nostalgic element with staying on-trend. Maybelline recently reinvented the jingle to incorporate elements of dance music that appeal to Gen Z audiences while maintaining the characteristics of classic 1990s jingles that connect millennials and young people.

So, can creating a memorable jingle help you sell your product?The short answer is yes. Studies that examine the choice of two products in the same category (for example, cameras) find that a product paired with a familiar song is more likely to be chosen than one paired with an unfamiliar song. Ta.

However, music preferences also independently influence product selection. In particular, if participants really disliked music, they were more likely to put off choosing a product, even if the song was familiar. This suggests that advertisers need to go beyond simply writing catchy songs and carefully consider the musical tastes of their target market.

Music leaves a strong impression on our memories. The same feature that helps you learn the alphabet through music or remember your first dance at your wedding also means you can easily remember which detergents will extend the life of your washing machine.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.