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Oh, has your family tried the powdermilk? —Parody Commercial for Powdermilk Biscuits, A Prairie Home Companion
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Prepare for ultimate flavor |
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Comes from the days of radio. When all advertising had to be audio, a good way to get people to remember your product was to have a catchy short tune associated with it, often mentioning the product or company's name. This is even common with phone numbers for their services.
While not quite as common as they used to be, jingles work, so they will probably be around as long as we have commercials. They can even become quite popular and be released as a single. Some well-known jingles have been around literally for decades, periodically having their instrumentation/arrangement updated to sound more modern.
Sometime an agency will expend money rather than talent and use an existing song.
- The distinctive song used in the United States to advertise Mister Clean cleaning products has been around for about half a century, having been written in 1958.
- Chock Full o' Nuts coffee has a jingle that dates back all the way to the heyday of radio; as of late Spring 2007, they were running a contest for customer-created "modernizations".
- "Chock Full o' Nuts is a heavenly coffee..."
- Oscar Meyer has two: "I Wish I Was an Oscar Mayer Wiener" and "My Bologna Has a First Name."
- In Britain some recent commercials for Mr. Sheen polish and Toblerone chocolate bars have revived jingles first heard in the 70s.
- One of the longest-running jingles on British TV was for Fairy Liquid, a washing-up detergent, first heard in the late 1950s and used for well over three decades.
- A recent Fairy Liquid advert has restored this jingle. Well, sort of...
- R. White's Lemonade ran a single commercial, featuring the Secret Lemonade Drinker song, for almost 20 years.
- The legendary Burma Shave signs are a non-musical example.
- Anna Russell's "A Practical Banana Promotion" included not only "Eta Banana," a parody of the Chiquita jingle, but also "Alas, What Should I Do," which sounds like just a rather mushy ballad when played the first time, but with subliminal advertising supposedly included. The song is repeated to reveal many contemporary (1950s) commercial jingles and slogans.
- The very first commercial jingle was General Mills' "Have You Tried Wheaties?" in 1926.
- An early part of Barry Manilow's career was helping major corporations sell you stuff:
- "It's a Pepsi Generation"
- "The original soft drink, Dr. Pepper"
- "I am stuck on Band-Aid"
- "You deserve a break today (at McDonald's)" Barry Manilow did not write this jingle (which makes me doubtful about attributing his authorship to the others). What is true is that when McDonald's introduced this jingle it was so popular that Manilow incorporated performing it into his stage show, thus causing the confusion regarding his authorship.
- "Grab a barrel of fun (Kentucky Fried Chicken)"
- "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there"
- Apparently, singing the jingle in State Farm commercials can make State Farm representatives materialize into the area.
- Stan Freberg took this to a logical extreme with "Omaha!", a parody of Oklahoma! for Butter-Nut Coffee, that ended up turning into a six minute mini-musical released as a novelty record.
- Metalocalypse's first episode features the band Dethklok perfoming a concert consisting of a single death metal coffee jingle.
- Another Dr Pepper jingle: "I'm a Pepper, he's a Pepper, she's a Pepper, we're a Pepper, wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?" This was famous enough to be parodied by SCTV and Remington Steele.
- And Ask a Ninja.
- And Veggie Tales, in one of their "Silly Songs".
- Phineas and Ferb with Doofensmirtz Evil Incorporated!
- The Simpsons has the "Canyonero" jingle, sung by Hank Williams, Jr.