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Commercial jingles strike a chord with consumers
01/13/2008 5:00 PM, Reuters
In 2002, Wired magazine cultural
guru Kevin Kelly boldly forecast that "the most popular band in
the world (will) produce very good 'jingles,' just as some of
the best directors today produce only very good commercials."
He was right -- can you say U2/Apple iPod, Jay-Z/Bud Select
and Rihanna/CoverGirl?
Kelly wasn't the first to consider connections between
advertising and music, of course. In 1989, cognitive music
expert David Huron, a professor at Ohio State, clarified
music's brand potency: "It is one of the peculiarities of human
audition and cognition that music tends to linger in the
listener's mind. Despite the largely visual orientation of
human beings, photographs and visual images do not infect human
consciousness to the same extent that melodies do."
For years and years, advertisers relied on the jingle to
service this reasonably scientific tenet to great effect: "Plop
Plop, Fizz, Fizz," "Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat," "I
wish I were an Oscar Meyer Weiner." The creators of the jingle
were proficient sonic persuaders, adulators of the hook, master
"mnemonicists," sonic signatories and dedicated disciples of
Pavlov.
Huron's research also showed that "listeners are sometimes
known to display evasive behavior in an effort to prevent being
seeded by a melody they know will persist mentally long after
the actual sound disappears" -- begging the question to the
brands: Did you have to let it linger?
Advertisers came to understand this point, taking a lesson
from cool films. Forty years ago, "Easy Rider," followed by a
string of Martin Scorsese flicks, used the emotion and
associative power of familiar rock songs to resonate with young
audiences. With the rise of cable TV, videogaming and the Web,
advertisers learned they could also bust through the clutter
and competition, and connect with their target audience with
familiar songs. A licensing frenzy ensued.
At first it was big blockbuster songs, then it was little
teenie-weenie ones -- indie artists found an outlet for their
music and thus, a chance to pay some bills. Soon TV shows
embraced the licensing world, and the music supervisor --
a.k.a. the purveyor of the playlist, the idolater of iTunes,
the search engine-ear -- became a real player in the music
industry and a practitioner of what some have called the new
A&R.
The brands became cool(er), selling out became selling in,
brand alliance companies popped up out of nowhere, record
companies became "media" companies.
This past year alone, the perception of the brand in the
musical equation has stuck a chord with consumers akimbo: the
Eagles/Wal-Mart, Starbucks/Paul McCartney, Rihanna/CoverGirl,
Apple/Feist, Disney/Disney, "American Idol"/"American Idol,"
Bob Dylan/Cadillac, John Mellencamp/Chevy, etc., etc., etc.
Last year, a marketing agency commissioned KRS-One, Nas and
Kanye West to record a song, the Rick Rubin-produced "Better
Than I've Ever Been," to commemorate the 25th anniversary of
the Air Force One sneaker. It has become what is most likely
the first branded tune to be nominated for a Grammy Award.
Music in advertising, in some ways, has now come full
circle back to the jingle -- but one created by a superstar
musician.
Historically, the worlds of branding and advertising have
been the underwriters of much of pop culture. In 2008 and
beyond, much of pop culture, especially music, may begin to
underwrite and rewrite the path of advertising and branding,
changing the dynamics of that equation from subsidizer to the
subsidized.
(Josh Rabinowitz is senior VP/director of music at ad
agency Grey Group and an adjunct professor at NYU's Steinhardt
School of Music and Performing Arts Professions.)
Reuters/Billboard
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