Jingle Jingle Little Star


How old were you when you first became aware of the world of advertising? I first became aware of advertisements when I was about five years old. I would wake up  early each Saturday morning and watch “One Saturday Morning” with my little sister. Man were those the days! I recalled being glued to the TV (but only for an hour and a half- that was the limit my mother set upon us) and continuously watched the brightly colored commercials. These commercials were telling me and my sister to buy things that would make us popular with our school peers which would make us happy. The first commercial I realized that I was being “sold” to was a Pokemon Pikachu commercial. The jingle they played over and over again was “Pika Pika, Pikachu!” with a bunch of kids of all different nationalities smiling with the toy. Less than ten years later the jingle still rings in my head randomly from time to time.  The question I wanted to explore in my blog is: why are jingles used in global advertising and is it affective?

A few years ago a study was done at the University of Wisconsin- Lacrosse regarding the effects of lyrics and music on recalling advertisements. They compared if instrumental music or vocal music was more effective in convincing customers to buy certain products. They studied seventy six undergraduate students and made them listen to three advertisements. Each advertisement was the same yet were slightly changed- some advertisements had the same male radio speaker with either instrumental or vocal music were played in the background. Each student was immediately asked to recall the ad after they heard the advertisements. In order to test the long term effect of the ad, students were followed up one week later to study their recollection of the ad. The study explained that jingles are used in advertising to “attract the customer’s attention, carry the advertised product’s message and act as a mnemonic device…  songs are an effective way to communicate a concept or idea in a memorable way” (1). The study also discovered that there was truly no difference between the recollection of the product if the advertisement used instrumental music or vocal music. Albeit the jingle (music) itself is what causes the consumers to remember a product.

So next time you catch yourself humming a jingle, know that the millions of dollars and hours spent into creating that perfect jingle in order to stick into your memory has worked!


Heaton, M., & Paris, K. (2006, January 1). The Effects of Music Congruency and Lyrics on Advertisement Recall. Retrieved September 3, 2014.


5 thoughts on “Jingle Jingle Little Star

  1. The jingle that has always been a classic since I was a kid was the Chili’s Baby Back Ribs song. Though, now that I think about it, it never made me actually try them…


  2. Jingles are actually really effective! I recently found out that the glass repair company with the jingle “Safelite Repair Safelite Replace” is worldwide and in many different languages. Everyone knows what they do because you can remember the annoying jingle.


  3. I can tell you the number of several different Chicago-land carpet retailers because they put their numbers in a jingle! When you place something to music, for whatever reason, our brains retain and sing it over and over. While hardly ever award winning, advertisements with jingles really pull their weight!


    • 588-2300 EMPIREEEE! I was thinking about the Empire commercial while reading this post and couldn’t stop singing that over and over in my head. I’m very happy someone commented about Chicago’s carpet jingles!


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