My husband has not eaten red meat in 23 years. While I can’t say the same, I still have never eaten a Hillshire Farm product, but we both can recite the greater portion of the Hillshire Farms product line at any given time, day or night. And now, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t try a Lil’ Smokey.
Am I showing off? Well, maybe a little, but the point is a competitive agency (who will remain nameless) dusted off the jingle and started using it to promote … meat. Not a new concept since back in the day all of us wanted to be Oscar Mayer wieners. Over the years, though, the jingle has fizzled out of prime rotation in Ad Land. It has made a guest appearance every now and then, but never landed a recurring role. What happened?
Wikipedia can’t tell me the exact origins of the jingle, so relying on memories of my formative years during the ’80s, it seemed that virtually every cartoon, sitcom and commercial had its own song. Sesame Street was in its heyday and whether you were 30 or 3, lived in the hood or on a sunny, suburban tree-lined block you could tell someone how to get there. Diff’rent Strokes told me that everyone has a special kind of story; Tootsie Roll told me how hallucinations of whatever I think I see can become a Tootsie Roll for me; McDonald’s told me that I deserve a break today when I didn’t know that I needed one and Facts of Life told me how to take the good with the bad. And evidently George Clooney listened because he emerged from a C-level show to become an A list actor.
Music and memory retention is the peanut butter and jelly of cognitive association. We learn our ABC’s in sing-song. And I’m sure there’s plenty of research to validate this connection. In our industry, it is all about getting people to remember the product. In an age where there is more stuff to steal the attention away from our intended audience, one upping the competition is not always so easy. The abstract concept that makes you think a little too long gets drowned out by the cat videos on YouTube. I’m not advocating going low brow or low tech, but maybe it’s time to go back to the old school with a new school mentality in order to break through the ADD-consumer, fast-forward commercial mindset that we contributed to.
Bring back the jingle … it might just help convert the steadfast or at least annoy the hell out of them enough to remember the product.
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