A short musical composition designed to promote a product, normally with text but sometimes purely instrumental. A jingle typically combines a simple couplet or quatrain of easily remembered, rhyming advertising copy with a melodic ‘hook’ that will implant itself in the listener's memory and carry its commercial message with it. For that reason, in most jingles, the product's name strategically coincides with the catchiest element of the hook. Though generally considered aural phenomena, in the late 19th century some jingles with musical notation appeared on trade cards, in sheet music and even in periodical advertisements; but radio and television provided a far more effective method of dissemination. The first broadcast jingle was for Wheaties breakfast cereal (1929), while the first nationally promoted jingle in the USA, ‘Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot’, appeared in the early 1940s. Some jingles have become hit songs, notably ‘I'd like to buy the world a Coke’ (as ‘I'd like to teach the world to sing’, 1973); conversely, some popular songs have been pressed into service as jingles, including ‘Let's face the music and dance’ for Allied-Dunbar Insurance (1995) and ‘Tall Cool One’ for Coca-Cola (1988).
See also Advertising, music in and Commercial.
ROBYNN J. STILWELL