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- 7 Plays
Can you say “middle of the road”? Banks are typically fairly conservative when it comes to promoting their services. Nothing too new, nothing too ground breaking, utilizing a message that will appeal across a large demographic (especially in Iowa). Using a traditional instruments combo (drums, bass, guitars, horns, electric piano, and some synthesizer) with large doses of melody doubling, this jingle hook focused on the personal aspect of their services and the home town qualities they’re trying to convey. (a necessity when you’re dealing with a community bank). The business component was their “Solutions” for the customers’ financial problems. Implied in all this is the “trust” factor of their “personal touch” (which plays into the Bank and Trust name). No hard sell to this jingle, just an audio reminder that they’re available to provide banking services and do so with a hometown attention to customer needs.
The melody relies on five notes based on a hemitonic pentatonic scale that adds the fourth major scale tone, and deletes the fifth from a major pentatonic scale. The pentatonic scale is the bedrock of melody around the world and has been ingrained in our brain (now that’s a hook!) for hundreds (maybe thousands) of years. Sing-able in a pleasant way, with special rhythmic attention given to the name of the client.
What Makes a Great Jingle?
What makes a great jingle work?
In a word: melody (singable please), wordplay (rhyme, alliteration, etc.), and supporting cast (arrangement, instrumentation, recording quality). Wait that’s more than a word, isn’t it?
Oh well, so be it.
We should start our discussion with why a jingle is so powerful and becomes so ingrained in our head in the first place.
Blame it on MUSIC!
The emotional bond it creates, way down deep in our primitive brain is positively, well…primitive. I’ve known it since I was 3, the first time MUSIC really grabbed me and planted roots.
Lately I’ve been reading “This is Your Brain on Music” and “The World in Six Songs” by neuroscientist Daniel Levitin. Fascinating reading if you want to know how something as simple as a song can make you laugh, cry, celebrate, or remember the exact location you first heard it, like maybe your 8th grade dance!
MUSIC creates networks that reach the far corners of the brain. It’s been around since man first struck bone to rock or hummed, chanted and shrieked at one another. Throughout the development of our faculties (your brain folks) music has been there to steer things along and form neural networks. These books are definitely worth a read.
Meanwhile, back to our subject:
OK, long story short: Put text to music and you’ve got something that will literally dig in and make it unforgettable. How the heck do we remember the alphabet when we’re two years old? By singing it!
For those of you not musically inclined, we have 12 notes to work with. It took only 6 to teach you the alphabet. Seven will get you an “Oscar Meyer Weiner” that you’ll never forget. Intel (computer processors) just needs 3 (and no words) to tout their product.
Yes, the stupid ones can be some of the best. You wish you could forget them but can’t because of that primitive grip.
Music can make the simple powerful. It conquers your emotions. Your brain remembers it and then with no power of your own, keeps on singing it in your head.
What is the most annoying jingle you wish you could forget? What is your favorite jingle? (is there such a thing?) How were they crafted to provoke those emotions in you that won’t let you forget them, or their message? Let’s hear from you.
In future posts we’ll examine the mechanisms that are at play when text meets music, great jingles are forged, and how they tap into your primitive brain.
