"A barbershop quartet in Minneapolis sung the first broadcast jingle over network radio, for Wheaties, in 1929. By 1939, the jingle had come to saturate the nation with commercial tunes intent on driving consumerism. Credited with the first massively promoted singing commercial, Pepsi-Cola "was played 296,426 times over 469 stations in 1941, and more than a million times by 1944, becoming in effect a new kind of golden disc hit" (Booth 322). The enormous success of the jingle was testimony to the profitability that jingles lent to products and the intimacy that they lent to the public. In his article, Jingle: Pepsi-Cola Hits the Spot, Mark Booth discusses the similarities between popular music and jingles claiming that the purpose of each is to cement a tune into the listeners mind. However, the "hook" or refrain of a popular song has traditionally been intended to snag the listener into the song itself, whereas the "hook" of a jingle is also designed to lodge itself in the mind. It is intended to draw the listener outside the lyrics to the product itself. A jingle, unlike a popular song, is not meant to sell itself but rather the product is represents."
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- bill 7-30-2004 5:37 am