October 23, 2012 • 34 mins
You probably can recite five right now. Commercial jingles are designed to hijack your working memory and implant a product or service and they really work. Learn about the history of these insidious and catchy advertising vehicles with Chuck and Josh.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Have you noticed
that Jerry has a more aggressive countdown since we're shooting video.
We're shooting video now for those of you not watching
(00:24):
and just listening like old school, Yeah, we uh we
have these on video potentially. Yeah, Jerry's but you're simply
counting down now. Yeah, he just yelled at us three
D one and I keep you know, we do two
of these uh at a time. Um, and I always
bring a shirt and always forget to change into it,
(00:46):
like changing. Yeah, I feel like a jerk. No, I
did change once the first time. Well, today you have
on your mystery signed feed at three thousands. Shout out
to Kevin and Bill. Yeah, guys, you're listening. You know, everybody, Mike, Joel,
anybody ever had anything to do with that show. TV's
(01:06):
Frank who's now a successful tweeter. Yeah, I don't know
if you follow him. He's he's pretty liberal. You know.
Joel went out and did his own thing as well.
Like they're both doing similar versions of their previous job.
What is it. Cinematic Titanic is Joel's and then Riff
Tracks is Mike's. Uh yeah, I'm I'm all aware, you know. Um,
(01:27):
Robert Lamb interviewed Joel Hodgson on and there's like a
really awesome, lengthy blog interview on the stuff to blow
your mind blog cool check it out. Yeah, so that's
the intro for commercial jingles, which is what we're talking about. UM,
I really don't have anything except chuck. Have you ever
(01:50):
heard of a little uh songwriter named Lynn Duddy? Nope?
I had neither. Apparently Lynn Duddy out the I Love
Bosco jingle, which I've never heard before, but it's listed
as a famous jingle, So I feel like I'm missing out.
I didn't know the actually I Love Bosco jingle. That's
(02:12):
the one that we list. What's with this? And Barry
Manelo wasn't in here, no, which let's just get that
out of the way. Hanelo, Who I love? You mean?
I have seen him front Row Center in Vegas. It
was an awesome show. Did he he looks so scary now?
I he's a great guy. I don't know if I
want in front Rows all I'm saying, he h. It
(02:33):
was cool. He said something to me, I had to
go to the bathroom, and I like went and left
in the middle of one of his songs, and while
he was singing, didn't miss a beat. He says to
my back, don't leave now it gets better, And then
just like went into the song yeah, and you was like, man,
did Josh Yeah? Did you hear it? Did you know
it was? I didn't hear. I came back and she
(02:53):
was still like, oh my god, did you hear? Yeah?
But Barry Manelo, in addition to his incredible singing career,
also is um one of the better UM commercial jingle
writers of all time. Yeah, performed and co wrote h
jingles like like a good neighbor state farm is there?
(03:15):
That's a big one. Man. They're still using that stuck
on the band aid because the band aid stuck on me.
That's huge. Grab a bucket of chicken. I haven't heard
that one. Grab a bucket of chicken. It was like seventies. Yeah,
and that that was for KFC, obviously, and you deserve
a break today at McDonald's Big one, And he apparently
(03:35):
recently did one for Dodge. I saw Randy Newman obviously.
He writes whatever pays the most. He wrote a bunch
back in the day. And then this guy Jim Brickman,
who made quite a name for himself with ads like
We're flint Stone's Kids. Oh yeah, for the vitamins. I
(03:57):
used to love those, but um, every once in a
while my mom just buy the cheaper knockoff ones and
the difference in taste. So there is a spell where
like she would find like sticky knockoff flint Stone vitamins
like in my Lincoln Logs, just stuck to things because
I'd just be like, yeah, I just put it in
(04:19):
my Lincoln Logs because I guess throwing it away was
too difficult. It's pretty good, but yeah. And then of
course Lynn Duddy and Brickman's other big one was Gere
Good Things to Do. You know how rich these people
must be if they had even just a halfway decent agent. Well,
it points out on this article. I don't know if
it's still the case, but if you wrote the jingle,
(04:41):
you own the rights to it. I know, I don't
know if that's still it seems like it should be.
I guarantee you Manilow owns the rights to the ones
that he wrote. He didn't need a dour, but he
still does, although he likes to cancel once in a while.
He just came I had tickets for his Atlanta show. Really,
he just cancel it. Cancel I'm not playing sorry, huh
(05:01):
they are? Oh really Yeah that's pretty lame. Yeah, I thought, well,
I hope he's all right. I was really into Barry
Manly when I was a kid, I know, for someone
who ended up being like fairly cool with my music, daste.
I've got great music taste too, and I love Yeah. No,
I'm just saying, all right, let's get into this, okay,
So Chuck, what is a commercial jingle? It's one of
(05:23):
these things that you know, you anybody can define it,
but it's actually a little specific. Uh yeah, Well it
is a song or a snippet um of a hopefully
memorable melody written about a product. And that's the original jingle.
We'll get into how it's changed over the years. So. Um,
(05:44):
it can have just about anything in it, like a
slogan like like a good neighbor, state farmers there. It
can have a phone number like a hundred five hundred
Empire today, Yeah, good going. Um. It can have a
call letter like NBC. Yeah, that is um I looked
(06:04):
into that. That is what they now call audio branding
or an audio logo. Um, like the sound of your
computer makes when you open it. You know, Apple has theirs,
PC said theirs or the ding ding ding from NBC
like you just said, but that's a big business now,
Or that jingle like who can never get rid of
(06:27):
that one once it's in your head. Uh, but that's
a new thing. Like that's even more specific now than
jingles are what they call audio branding. And every time
I hear the word branding, a little piece of me die. Um.
But the dude from the Human League, remember that band? Ye,
he has a company now that's like getting rich doing this. Yeah.
(06:47):
Basically it's a little more complex in a jingle because
they're trying to capture like the essence of your brand
with a few notes maybe or in the case of
like an LG dryer instead of hearing at the in
it plays this little melody. It's like laundrys time. No,
what is that? Uh No, it's a little melody, like
(07:07):
a little dinging chiming melody. Who who was it that
wrote the Yahoo one Yahoo man? Who was that? We
were just talking about that recently? How was the guy
who wrote? Uh? Oh man, I can't remember. Oh, well,
somebody right in it was a previous podcast that's less
(07:28):
than two months old. It's all gone now. Uh alright,
So anyway, that's audio branding. But oh we left out
one other, one other part of a jingle. It can
also tout the benefits of a product. Yeah, especially back
in the day, that was huge. Like you'll wonder where
the yellow went when you brush your teeth with PEPs
it in Really you're not familiar, No, I remember the
(07:52):
crest Um the Crest Patrol. Yeah, we make holes and teeth.
Remember that? No? That that? Oh man, I wish I
would look this stuff up. In the seventies, that was
the cartoon of the Crest, I remember that. Yeah. And
then there were the the the yup mouse who were
the bad people in that? I don't remember. The enemies
were the ones we make holes and teeth, the cavity creeps.
(08:16):
I know, the cavity creeps. Alright, I'm firing on all
you know. Um. I remember being in like third grade,
I think, and we got a bunch of promotional materials
from the Crest Patrol and it included a play of
which I was I think a toothbrush talk about infiltrating schools,
like we put on a play about the Crest Patrol
(08:38):
in school. Wow, that is weird. It's a little weird,
So Chuck Jingles. They've been around since the Egyptians, as
I understand it, that is not true. Technically, it is
true because the Egyptians were around in the nineteen thirties.
Funny Guy Christmas Eve six they have credited the um.
(09:01):
The Wheaties Quartet was singing about the Wheaties Breakfast Cereal
first ever jingle, UM, And apparently Wheaties was in pretty
bad shape and they're even gonna get rid of it
until they noticed that in markets where they were playing
this song on the radio, Wheaties picked up and they said, hey,
maybe this jingles. Maybe he's got something to it. And
(09:22):
they probably call it a jingle at the time. UM.
And then they put it nationwide and Wheaties was saved. Yeah.
Have you did you listen to it? No? Is it
pretty bad? No, it's great. It sounds like the b Sharp's,
you know, it's barbershop quartet. It sounds like Baby on Board, Yeah,
except singing about Wheaties. So that whole Wheaties thing is
pretty well established, but some still dispute it. And it
(09:44):
depends on how you look at, um what a jingle is, um,
whether that's the first one or not. But there's a
song that was written in nineteen o five called in
My Merry Old Mobile, like Gus Edwards and Vincent Brian
and I didn't realize that people were named Vincent back
in nineteen o five. Does that seem like a modern name.
(10:05):
It seems more like nineteen forties to nineteen seventies. Maybe
maybe you know there's a website that charts popularity of
names in a graph. I believe that I bet you
Vincent is pretty low back then. Um, but those two
guys made in My Mary Oldsmobile and Oldsmobile used it
in the thirties, but it wasn't originally recorded or written
(10:28):
four Oldsmobile to use. I think the guys just really
like their Oldsmobile and so um. The author of this article,
Tim Faulkner, points out that you're probably more accurately call
it the first pop song licensed for commercial use. Okay,
that makes more sense. So it's technically not a jingle.
So the Weaties Quartet still stands Christmas Eve, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
(10:50):
Is there any place more desolate than Hey it worked, yeah,
because we still have wheaties today. So the whole reason
Jingles came about was because you know, I'm all about
my like nineteen thirties consumer history. Yeah, and like in
in the thirties, like consumer protection was like way stronger,
(11:11):
and one of the things was direct advertising was very strict.
So funny now yeah, it's so like no holds bart
Now you know Australia is like going to town like
preventing direct marketing to kids. Yeah, they're really protecting their kids.
It is very cool. Plus beer you can only market
here exactly. If you remember when there used to be
(11:31):
like cigarette ads and oh yeah, cutty sark ads and
things like that. It's funny to look through. Uh if
you go like to uh antique places and they have
old life magazine stuff, you just look at the ads
and it's like these happy people slowly killing themselves with merits.
Um So. But in the in the thirties, like if
you wanted to get an ad on the radio, you
(11:53):
pretty much had to buy some time like a half
hour or an hour and put on a pro rim
and Hence we have things like the King Biscuit Flower
Hour you know um, or the General Motors Um car
Thriller Mysteries, you know whatever. And at first I think
it was really boring and dull and dumb. And they
(12:16):
figured out that consumers were a little more savvy and
we're not really willing to share their time for something
that's just an ad like an infomercial, right, so they
started to make things like the Shadow and Little or
fanany um, and they made them so they could advertise.
(12:37):
But eventually it gave us radio programming and then ultimately
TV programming. As we understand it today, we're basically born
out of this desire to advertise to radio listeners in
the thirties. Pretty cool, yeah, um. And I didn't realize this,
or I realized, I guess, But it's just hard to
imagine these days because it's so advertising is so all
over the place. But back then, you had direct to
(13:02):
consumer sales one on one you go to a store,
or you have a traveling salesman come to your house
to sell a vacuum cleaner or whatever. And the ads
back in the day, uh kind of bore that out.
They were basically real matter of fact and kind of
dry and really just bullet bullet pointed, how our product
(13:23):
is better than the other's, very boring, very dry, Like
our spats are better than our competitors spats because they're
made with virgin baby goat skin. That's right. But with
the popularity of radio, things changed and they realized that
jingles uh could make a real impact, you know, and
they did because it's music, as the Wheaties Quartet proved
(13:46):
pretty early on. Um, and just right out of the gate,
people started really paying attention to this, and they brought
the field of psychology in and psychology started cranking out
books that basically guided advertisers and companies on how to
reach these audiences like who's listening when, and like how
to talk to them and um yeah. But they just
(14:11):
basically exploded overnight, and it was all largely thanks to
the jingle. Yeah, and you know, the early on and
I think it still holds true today. If you want
to be a successful jingle, it's got to be very simple.
You gotta have a repetition. Um, you gotta have Rhyming
is good, it is, It helps stick in your head
a little more and before you know it, it's become
(14:33):
part of your consciousness for like life, like they point
out here in the article the Oscar Meyer uh Bolognay song,
Like anyone who grew up in the seventies can sing
that word for word today unless you just weren't paying
attention as a kid. Do you want to sing a
little of it? Well? Now do you know Bologne has
a first name? It's O S c A R. And
(14:54):
the plot plot fiz fizz. Oh, what a relief. It
is like these things get burned into the collective consciousness.
But um costanza, what's that from Seinfeld? Remember? Like George
gets a girlfriend because he uh, he associates his name
with that by men, and he goes Stanza and the
the woman doesn't even like him, but she can't get
(15:16):
him out of her head because that castanzas in there,
which you would call an earworm, which we've talked about
it feels like before, right, I think so, But we
may as well talk about the or verm. Is that
in German it's or verm and everyone knows it what
an earworm is. It's when it a song or a
(15:36):
part of a song gets stuck in your head. Sometimes
an explicably splica inexplicably, something weird got stuck in your head.
Like you wake up in the morning and the song
is in your head. You hadn't heard it in weeks, months, years,
who knows, but it's just there. And they don't really
know how it works either. No, but a couple of
(15:58):
very smart guys in the seventies got together. Their names
were Alan Badly and Graham Hitch, and they I think
they're responsible for coming up with the idea of the
working memory. Well they went on to write The Hustle Um,
but the Badly and Hitch first, Um, I guess I've
(16:19):
investigated working memory. And they came up with this thing
called the the phonological loop, right, which is an earworm
or a snippet of music or a a sentence, whatever,
it's running around. You can almost see it facing this
track in your head over and over again. That's the
phonological loop. And it's made of two parts, right, the
(16:43):
phonological store, which is your inner ear which here's it,
and then the articulatory rehearsal system, which is you're driving
yourself totally insane by saying it over and over repeating.
It's how we learned to talk or learn a foreign language. Um,
and they think that this phonological um loop is basically
(17:06):
an earworm, hitching a ride on this neurological process that
we have naturally and basically exploiting it for commercial purposes. Wow,
happens more in women, supposedly, more musicians supposedly, And if
you have O c D. It might really present a
problem with you. That was a really good episode of ours.
(17:28):
If you ask O c D. We talked about David
Sedaris licks light switches. I think yeah, in his book
he did. I don't know if that's real. I think
it is, though, Um, how to get rid of an earworm?
There's all kinds of things you can try, like actually
hearing the song in full um, Like, Um, if you
(17:52):
can't get call me maybe out of your head, right,
just go listen to call me. Maybe sometimes singing it
yourself all the way through. You can do it. You
could sing call me. Maybe you could vanquish it from
your mind. But there's really no sure fireway that those
are justiciable tricks. I heard someone say something about listening
to rush, We'll get rid of its? Was that what
(18:12):
it was? Because you just gets smart? Right? Um? Who's
professor Colaris. So he's the one who's basically he's a
University of Cincinnati professor. He's in the ear Warm article, okay,
and he has dedicated his career to basically exploring earworms
figuring out how to how they work. Um, I think
(18:36):
he's made a name for himself in it. He appears
in not one, but two how Stuff Works articles. So
he's arrived. So what he's done, um through surveys, he said,
it's obviously all up to the person is very individual
as far as what songs get stuck in your head.
But he put together, through some surveys what he calls
the playlist from Hell, and I would have to agree,
(19:00):
I'd like to see this updated because it's a little
dated a little bit. I mean, I'm sure that One
Party Rock is gotta be at the top of the list.
I don't know that One Party Rock is in the
pust to not do that at all. You're there's it's
literally impossible that you have not heard party Is it
a song? Yes, I have not heard it. I will
(19:21):
play it for you. You'll be like, oh, okay, is
it like a pop swan? Yeah, it's not a commercial.
It's everything. It's inescapable. It is the alpha and it's
just not possible. You haven't heard it all right, But
his playlist from Hell includes uh, the baby back ribs,
Chili's jingle which we won't even say out loud, the
(19:43):
Bajamans who let the Dogs out. That's a good one. Queens,
we will rock you. That's another good one. That's a
good one. But I don't, I don't know. That doesn't
strike me as particularly you're wormy. Um, give me a break.
It's a good one to ki at bar Uh the
Mission Impossible theme. I think it's funny that this is
(20:04):
on here because I had an experience with that when
I lived in New Jersey. It was when I think
the first Mission Impossible movie came out in YouTube did
the update of the theme. That thing was stuck in
my head for like three days. I was walking around
just going done up corners really quick and like looking
around doing a tuck and roll. It was crazy. So
(20:26):
it didn't surprise me to see that on here. Y
m c A, there's nothing wrong with that. I kind
of like this playlist. I wouldn't call it from Hell,
I'd call it maybe from hack at Best. Okay, Um,
Now I do hate. Um, the Lion Sleeps Tonight. I
hate that song. I think that's probably on there for
the very fav womb there it is by Tag Team
(20:48):
and other good It's a Small World. I guess that
one because you go to Disney World and you just
hear it over and over and over. Um, what ride
is that? It's a Small World? Is that the name
of the ride too? Yeah? I think so. It's been
a while, but yeah, so, Um, there's still plenty of
jingles out there. I'm trying to think of a of
a new jingle. Well, they're they're all over um sports radio.
(21:13):
Oh yeah, because I listened to a lot of sports
talk and me and my lead guitarist Eddie who you
know Eddie Eddie Cooper. Uh, we have been joking around
about doing um, like a medley of radio jingles in
our set, because if you listen to sports radio, man,
it's like the same ones like what well, looky, looky, looky,
(21:34):
here comes cookie alarm Force. I haven't heard that one.
Alarm Force. Ah. Oh man, I can't think of them,
but yeah, I mean there's just like if you listen
to any kind of sports radio, it's like the same ones.
The had that always sticks out to me when I
think of like sports radio, talk radio. Is that one
guy who's he's like trying to sell like some sort
(21:56):
of um REFI like, he's a refinance guy. He's like,
it's the biggest no brainer in the history. Or if
you've heard and this isn't even a jingle but a
full on song, if you heard any of the Blue
Belt ice cream commercials, I don't know, it's pretty great. Oh,
I mean they're all different, but it's all like this
(22:18):
guy singing about like you know, country morning and the
sound of birds chirping, and it's like the sound of
coming home is what you taste when you eat Blue
Belt ice cream, which is a lie. Um. But like
you said, they sort of have gone out of fashion
(22:38):
a little bit at least from the heyday, even though
they're still around. Yeah, they still they are viewed somewhat
as hokey. I think if you stop and think about
a commercial jingle or the concept of a jingle, it's hokey,
even though you probably have five hundred of them in
your head that you could recall at any moment exactly.
But yes, if you are say, um, the company responsible
(23:00):
for running VW's advertising campaign. You're probably not going to
use a commercial jingle. You're trying to go the other route,
which is to appropriate a pop song. Yeah, and the
v WS case, they used Nick Drake, which great one,
the song Pink Moon. Yeah, that's how I came to
find out who Nick Drake was. That's how a lot
of people came to find out. And that's what the
(23:20):
article points out as a lot of times they can
resuscitate careers, although in his case he passed away, but uh,
he definitely like was way more popular after that commercial
than he was before. Um. Stereo Lab was also VWA.
Uh who else? Um. I don't think they needed any help,
but it was like a perfect fit. The Polyphonic Spree,
(23:42):
Oh yeah, they had that there. I can't remember the
name of the song was like their huge hit. Um
that was on a VW commercial, Like when VW first
came out with the New Beatle Hey and shout out
to a Toby right yeah, Toby he he's shooting him
feature film right now? Yeah in Louise Na, Like he's
shooting it. Yeah. Toby's a friend of Josh and Yummis
(24:03):
who was in the Polyphonic Spree. And now he is
Ah did he really? I don't think I knew that. Yeah,
he was like, uh, friends with a couple of them
and said, hey, you know, I want to be in
the band. What do you need? And they're like, how
about Theoreman? And back then anyone could be in the
Polyox Spree and it was huge, it was extensive. Um.
And he went out and bought a Thereman and taught
(24:25):
himself how to play it and came back. I was like, ah,
I don't want to be in and he like went
to Japan. Um like toured the world with the with
the spree for a while. That's the spree. Yeah, Um,
that's awesome. And he's making a movie now. Yeah, well
you know they had that short he produced one Ye
starring Bonnie Prince Billy. It's amazing. Now they're onto something else.
(24:48):
It's like a feature film the same same company. Um. Anyway,
pop songs getting back to that, Uh they credit the Beatles,
UM seven Nike commercial. I would Nike famously use Revolution.
Do you remember that. Yeah, it's kind of starting this
whole new wave of let's use like pay a lot
(25:09):
of money to use really popular songs because it's not
enough anymore. You can't say our brand is better than yours.
You like, you want to identify your brand with a uh,
the public consciousness and a lifestyle like um, that Cat
Stephen's song Wind of My Soul and like the Timberland
ad that kind of struck where it's like, put these
(25:32):
shoes on and you will automatically went for that. I
am too. I'd like to look into that. I wonder
if he doesn't have the rights. It doesn't seem like
something he would do. There's no way he doesn't have
the rights to the song. But um, it is kind
of you. You raise a point like it is surprising
that he would have gone for that. But apparently if
you work on artists long enough, or just wait for
(25:55):
them to grow old and need money, they will eventually
cave or think he didn't need the money. But who Sting? No,
I doubt if he did it because he needed the money.
I guess that's right. He has a castle. He did
it for a reason though, and it was probably money.
Um So in the eighties when Sting was still because
you know the Police started out as a punk band, yeah, um,
(26:18):
and in the eighties it was postpunk, but Sting still
thought of himself as a pretty cool dude, and apparently
I don't know the company, but they approached Sting and said, hey,
we want to use don't stand so close to me
for our deodoric commercial. It's a terrible idea, and he
very wisely said no way. But then Jaguar said, hey,
you know this terrible desert rose thing you have going on,
(26:40):
we want to use that for our egg campaign and
Sting said, way right. The cheers to that, uh and
that's a big you know, bands get accused of selling
out uh less these days, I think because especially smaller bands,
you just you know, you people think music is free now,
so that making money selling records like they used to.
(27:03):
They break even on tours, these small bands, So I like,
I've done a one eight. Used to think like, I
don't sell out, but now I'm like, dude, make whatever
money you can while you can. I know, Band of
Horses one of my favorite and Jerry's favorites. Um, they
were kind of taken in the map by some of
their fans because they did they license her movie to Chevy,
(27:24):
and the dude Ben Bridwell came out. It was like, no,
you know, I drive a Chevy it's old and maybe
now I can get the A C fixed. You know,
he drives an old pickup chucking. He's like, what's what's
the problem, Like, we're trying to make a little dough here,
and it's a product I believe in, you know. Um
they're that part in the movie The Doors where like
(27:46):
two Morrissons like off on like whatever for a while
and comes back and sees that, like, um, light my
fire has been Chevy commercially the ray Coniff singers or
something doing it, and he's likes catchy tune that starts
breaking sty that brings up my my biggest pet peeve
(28:07):
today is this new thing and it's not super new
because they've been doing it, but it's like worse than
it's ever been. When they will take a great classic
song and bastardize it and have some like Lady Session
singer come in and sing like Satisfaction by the Rolling
Stones but in a different way and talking about being
(28:30):
like satisfied with your you know, your new car, and
it's just it's all over the place now and it's
just the worst. Like I would rather hear someone licensed
their real song then hear them remake it with some
awful session singer and change the words to fit their product,
you know what I'm saying. But then that corporation would
take the Ben Bradwell stands and Ben Bridwell Ben Bridwell
(28:54):
stance and be like, hey man, we gotta make our
quarterly earnings. Yeah or not true. I was being totally facetious.
That doesn't count. It's not the same thing or the
other thing now that um like, the Black Keys are
suing Pizza Hut right now because what companies will do.
And Tom Waits to sue people a bunch of times,
like every other year he sees someone because they'll go
(29:16):
in and they'll say, give us something, Tom Waits, he
or boy listened to Gold on the Ceiling by the
Black Keys, can you do something like that? And these
you know dudes that write these songs basically rip them off.
And the Black Keys are watching Pizza Hut and they're like,
wait a minute, that's my song in a different, slightly
different way selling pozzones and so we're going to see
(29:38):
you and take you to court. And that's when they
get in court and like compare them side by side,
and you know Ray Parker Junior famously yeah, yeah, got
messed up because he apparently ripped off I need a
new drug. We lose song, that's right, and I never
really heard it, and then finally I it clicked and
I was right, Oh wow, that is really sicky. Settled
(29:59):
he lost that would be settled or what, But he
definitely lost that case. I guess finally we should talk
a little bit about product placement because, um, but we
had a whole product placement episode. Oh yeah, that's right. Well,
obviously with TiVo and DVRs now, people are speeding through commercials,
so you are going to find some product placement in
(30:19):
your shows, quite possibly our own even it happens. But um,
there are better ways than others to do it. And
if you want a good laugh, go to the YouTube
and google soap Opera Cereal and um just watch it's great.
That's all I'm gonna say. I watched that the other day.
(30:40):
It's so funny and awful. It's just it's colossally bad.
But it's so bad that like it's earned a place
in the pantheon of pop culture now, so it did
his job. Yeah, I bet you. There's a lot of
hits on that on YouTube. Honey, what are you doing?
Just having some delicious hunting that cheerios. Boy, these things
(31:02):
really packed in fiber and the thing. It's like a
seven minute long scene. Yeah, it was like they just
started talking about cheerios the whole time. Yeah, it's pretty funny. Um.
And there was a little product placement right there for
your cheerio. So it's all over the place. Bonus. No,
I mean just now, no, but I'm saying, jeez, all
we did was talking about brands. If we don't cook's
pest control is a check. Yeah, we're just combined. Get
(31:26):
the termites out of my house. I want to check. Um,
let's see. If you want to learn more about commercial jingles,
you can type those words into the search bar at
how stuff works dot com. And I said search bar,
which means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this.
(31:46):
You remember you asked for good uh good causes in
the white collar crimes. Yeah, this one was from matthe
Ands Georgia. Oh hey, so it made the cut. I've
been there. Uh love the show, guys. And now a
segue into a shameless plug right to the point for
a nonpro off it in Athens, Georgia, I represent free
I t Athens FREDA. It's an all volunteer um nonprofit
(32:08):
and it is a grassroots organization dedicated to reclaiming discarded
technology like computers, refurbishing it and distributing it to those
in need. That's great, it makes perfect sense too. I think,
in fact, I have some old stuff I could donate.
He know, there's golden There's like all sorts of rarrors
and precious metals that like, if you in the computer
bind them like a bunch of computers, you'd have low
(32:32):
cold nugget. Yeah, well maybe I'll do that instead. We
serve mostly low income populations that cannot afford the latest
and greatest technology. We also aim to reduced e waste
through computer reuse and responsible recycling. We are currently in
need of working laptops for a volunteer program. I know
a whole room full of them. Seriously, laptops are distributed
(32:54):
to volunteers that complete our computer refurbishing program. We're interested
in laptop computers that have been aid within the last
five years with little to no damage. Donating your computer
can change someone with life, and imagine you can write
that stuff off. You know, we really should see what
they're gonna do with those, see if we can get
good to discuss. Uh, donating can change someone's life. I
(33:15):
already said that, but it can really change someone's life.
Financial donations are also welcome, so you can visit www
dot free I t Athens dot org and thank you
so much guys. That is from Joel Isler in Athens.
Thanks Joel, appreciate that. It is a very good cause.
We'll see if we can help. Thank you. If not,
(33:37):
we're in addition to hopefully there's a lot of listeners
in the Athens in Atlanta area that can help. Agreed,
or people can mail them from all over I'm sure
you could, or just go there and give them a
little cash, give him tin bucks. Oh yeah, you can
do that too. What was it a free I t
Athens dot org. That's right. Nice. Um. If you have
(33:58):
a commercial jingle, we want to hear it. Send us
a link some great forgotten commercial jingle we want to
hear about it, um, or the worst one ever. Yeah,
let's just start talking about this. Let's get a conversation going.
You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you should know, and you can send us an email
(34:18):
to Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Works dot com
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Have you noticed
that Jerry has a more aggressive countdown since we're shooting video.
We're shooting video now for those of you not watching
(00:24):
and just listening like old school, Yeah, we uh we
have these on video potentially. Yeah, Jerry's but you're simply
counting down now. Yeah, he just yelled at us three
D one and I keep you know, we do two
of these uh at a time. Um, and I always
bring a shirt and always forget to change into it,
(00:46):
like changing. Yeah, I feel like a jerk. No, I
did change once the first time. Well, today you have
on your mystery signed feed at three thousands. Shout out
to Kevin and Bill. Yeah, guys, you're listening. You know, everybody, Mike, Joel,
anybody ever had anything to do with that show. TV's
(01:06):
Frank who's now a successful tweeter. Yeah, I don't know
if you follow him. He's he's pretty liberal. You know.
Joel went out and did his own thing as well.
Like they're both doing similar versions of their previous job.
What is it. Cinematic Titanic is Joel's and then Riff
Tracks is Mike's. Uh yeah, I'm I'm all aware, you know. Um,
(01:27):
Robert Lamb interviewed Joel Hodgson on and there's like a
really awesome, lengthy blog interview on the stuff to blow
your mind blog cool check it out. Yeah, so that's
the intro for commercial jingles, which is what we're talking about. UM,
I really don't have anything except chuck. Have you ever
(01:50):
heard of a little uh songwriter named Lynn Duddy? Nope?
I had neither. Apparently Lynn Duddy out the I Love
Bosco jingle, which I've never heard before, but it's listed
as a famous jingle, So I feel like I'm missing out.
I didn't know the actually I Love Bosco jingle. That's
(02:12):
the one that we list. What's with this? And Barry
Manelo wasn't in here, no, which let's just get that
out of the way. Hanelo, Who I love? You mean?
I have seen him front Row Center in Vegas. It
was an awesome show. Did he he looks so scary now?
I he's a great guy. I don't know if I
want in front Rows all I'm saying, he h. It
(02:33):
was cool. He said something to me, I had to
go to the bathroom, and I like went and left
in the middle of one of his songs, and while
he was singing, didn't miss a beat. He says to
my back, don't leave now it gets better, And then
just like went into the song yeah, and you was like, man,
did Josh Yeah? Did you hear it? Did you know
it was? I didn't hear. I came back and she
(02:53):
was still like, oh my god, did you hear? Yeah?
But Barry Manelo, in addition to his incredible singing career,
also is um one of the better UM commercial jingle
writers of all time. Yeah, performed and co wrote h
jingles like like a good neighbor state farm is there?
(03:15):
That's a big one. Man. They're still using that stuck
on the band aid because the band aid stuck on me.
That's huge. Grab a bucket of chicken. I haven't heard
that one. Grab a bucket of chicken. It was like seventies. Yeah,
and that that was for KFC, obviously, and you deserve
a break today at McDonald's Big one, And he apparently
(03:35):
recently did one for Dodge. I saw Randy Newman obviously.
He writes whatever pays the most. He wrote a bunch
back in the day. And then this guy Jim Brickman,
who made quite a name for himself with ads like
We're flint Stone's Kids. Oh yeah, for the vitamins. I
(03:57):
used to love those, but um, every once in a
while my mom just buy the cheaper knockoff ones and
the difference in taste. So there is a spell where
like she would find like sticky knockoff flint Stone vitamins
like in my Lincoln Logs, just stuck to things because
I'd just be like, yeah, I just put it in
(04:19):
my Lincoln Logs because I guess throwing it away was
too difficult. It's pretty good, but yeah. And then of
course Lynn Duddy and Brickman's other big one was Gere
Good Things to Do. You know how rich these people
must be if they had even just a halfway decent agent. Well,
it points out on this article. I don't know if
it's still the case, but if you wrote the jingle,
(04:41):
you own the rights to it. I know, I don't
know if that's still it seems like it should be.
I guarantee you Manilow owns the rights to the ones
that he wrote. He didn't need a dour, but he
still does, although he likes to cancel once in a while.
He just came I had tickets for his Atlanta show. Really,
he just cancel it. Cancel I'm not playing sorry, huh
(05:01):
they are? Oh really Yeah that's pretty lame. Yeah, I thought, well,
I hope he's all right. I was really into Barry
Manly when I was a kid, I know, for someone
who ended up being like fairly cool with my music, daste.
I've got great music taste too, and I love Yeah. No,
I'm just saying, all right, let's get into this, okay,
So Chuck, what is a commercial jingle? It's one of
(05:23):
these things that you know, you anybody can define it,
but it's actually a little specific. Uh yeah, Well it
is a song or a snippet um of a hopefully
memorable melody written about a product. And that's the original jingle.
We'll get into how it's changed over the years. So. Um,
(05:44):
it can have just about anything in it, like a
slogan like like a good neighbor, state farmers there. It
can have a phone number like a hundred five hundred
Empire today, Yeah, good going. Um. It can have a
call letter like NBC. Yeah, that is um I looked
(06:04):
into that. That is what they now call audio branding
or an audio logo. Um, like the sound of your
computer makes when you open it. You know, Apple has theirs,
PC said theirs or the ding ding ding from NBC
like you just said, but that's a big business now,
Or that jingle like who can never get rid of
(06:27):
that one once it's in your head. Uh, but that's
a new thing. Like that's even more specific now than
jingles are what they call audio branding. And every time
I hear the word branding, a little piece of me die. Um.
But the dude from the Human League, remember that band? Ye,
he has a company now that's like getting rich doing this. Yeah.
(06:47):
Basically it's a little more complex in a jingle because
they're trying to capture like the essence of your brand
with a few notes maybe or in the case of
like an LG dryer instead of hearing at the in
it plays this little melody. It's like laundrys time. No,
what is that? Uh No, it's a little melody, like
(07:07):
a little dinging chiming melody. Who who was it that
wrote the Yahoo one Yahoo man? Who was that? We
were just talking about that recently? How was the guy
who wrote? Uh? Oh man, I can't remember. Oh, well,
somebody right in it was a previous podcast that's less
(07:28):
than two months old. It's all gone now. Uh alright,
So anyway, that's audio branding. But oh we left out
one other, one other part of a jingle. It can
also tout the benefits of a product. Yeah, especially back
in the day, that was huge. Like you'll wonder where
the yellow went when you brush your teeth with PEPs
it in Really you're not familiar, No, I remember the
(07:52):
crest Um the Crest Patrol. Yeah, we make holes and teeth.
Remember that? No? That that? Oh man, I wish I
would look this stuff up. In the seventies, that was
the cartoon of the Crest, I remember that. Yeah. And
then there were the the the yup mouse who were
the bad people in that? I don't remember. The enemies
were the ones we make holes and teeth, the cavity creeps.
(08:16):
I know, the cavity creeps. Alright, I'm firing on all
you know. Um. I remember being in like third grade,
I think, and we got a bunch of promotional materials
from the Crest Patrol and it included a play of
which I was I think a toothbrush talk about infiltrating schools,
like we put on a play about the Crest Patrol
(08:38):
in school. Wow, that is weird. It's a little weird,
So Chuck Jingles. They've been around since the Egyptians, as
I understand it, that is not true. Technically, it is
true because the Egyptians were around in the nineteen thirties.
Funny Guy Christmas Eve six they have credited the um.
(09:01):
The Wheaties Quartet was singing about the Wheaties Breakfast Cereal
first ever jingle, UM, And apparently Wheaties was in pretty
bad shape and they're even gonna get rid of it
until they noticed that in markets where they were playing
this song on the radio, Wheaties picked up and they said, hey,
maybe this jingles. Maybe he's got something to it. And
(09:22):
they probably call it a jingle at the time. UM.
And then they put it nationwide and Wheaties was saved. Yeah.
Have you did you listen to it? No? Is it
pretty bad? No, it's great. It sounds like the b Sharp's,
you know, it's barbershop quartet. It sounds like Baby on Board, Yeah,
except singing about Wheaties. So that whole Wheaties thing is
pretty well established, but some still dispute it. And it
(09:44):
depends on how you look at, um what a jingle is, um,
whether that's the first one or not. But there's a
song that was written in nineteen o five called in
My Merry Old Mobile, like Gus Edwards and Vincent Brian
and I didn't realize that people were named Vincent back
in nineteen o five. Does that seem like a modern name.
(10:05):
It seems more like nineteen forties to nineteen seventies. Maybe
maybe you know there's a website that charts popularity of
names in a graph. I believe that I bet you
Vincent is pretty low back then. Um, but those two
guys made in My Mary Oldsmobile and Oldsmobile used it
in the thirties, but it wasn't originally recorded or written
(10:28):
four Oldsmobile to use. I think the guys just really
like their Oldsmobile and so um. The author of this article,
Tim Faulkner, points out that you're probably more accurately call
it the first pop song licensed for commercial use. Okay,
that makes more sense. So it's technically not a jingle.
So the Weaties Quartet still stands Christmas Eve, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
(10:50):
Is there any place more desolate than Hey it worked, yeah,
because we still have wheaties today. So the whole reason
Jingles came about was because you know, I'm all about
my like nineteen thirties consumer history. Yeah, and like in
in the thirties, like consumer protection was like way stronger,
(11:11):
and one of the things was direct advertising was very strict.
So funny now yeah, it's so like no holds bart
Now you know Australia is like going to town like
preventing direct marketing to kids. Yeah, they're really protecting their kids.
It is very cool. Plus beer you can only market
here exactly. If you remember when there used to be
(11:31):
like cigarette ads and oh yeah, cutty sark ads and
things like that. It's funny to look through. Uh if
you go like to uh antique places and they have
old life magazine stuff, you just look at the ads
and it's like these happy people slowly killing themselves with merits.
Um So. But in the in the thirties, like if
you wanted to get an ad on the radio, you
(11:53):
pretty much had to buy some time like a half
hour or an hour and put on a pro rim
and Hence we have things like the King Biscuit Flower
Hour you know um, or the General Motors Um car
Thriller Mysteries, you know whatever. And at first I think
it was really boring and dull and dumb. And they
(12:16):
figured out that consumers were a little more savvy and
we're not really willing to share their time for something
that's just an ad like an infomercial, right, so they
started to make things like the Shadow and Little or
fanany um, and they made them so they could advertise.
(12:37):
But eventually it gave us radio programming and then ultimately
TV programming. As we understand it today, we're basically born
out of this desire to advertise to radio listeners in
the thirties. Pretty cool, yeah, um. And I didn't realize this,
or I realized, I guess, But it's just hard to
imagine these days because it's so advertising is so all
over the place. But back then, you had direct to
(13:02):
consumer sales one on one you go to a store,
or you have a traveling salesman come to your house
to sell a vacuum cleaner or whatever. And the ads
back in the day, uh kind of bore that out.
They were basically real matter of fact and kind of
dry and really just bullet bullet pointed, how our product
(13:23):
is better than the other's, very boring, very dry, Like
our spats are better than our competitors spats because they're
made with virgin baby goat skin. That's right. But with
the popularity of radio, things changed and they realized that
jingles uh could make a real impact, you know, and
they did because it's music, as the Wheaties Quartet proved
(13:46):
pretty early on. Um, and just right out of the gate,
people started really paying attention to this, and they brought
the field of psychology in and psychology started cranking out
books that basically guided advertisers and companies on how to
reach these audiences like who's listening when, and like how
to talk to them and um yeah. But they just
(14:11):
basically exploded overnight, and it was all largely thanks to
the jingle. Yeah, and you know, the early on and
I think it still holds true today. If you want
to be a successful jingle, it's got to be very simple.
You gotta have a repetition. Um, you gotta have Rhyming
is good, it is, It helps stick in your head
a little more and before you know it, it's become
(14:33):
part of your consciousness for like life, like they point
out here in the article the Oscar Meyer uh Bolognay song,
Like anyone who grew up in the seventies can sing
that word for word today unless you just weren't paying
attention as a kid. Do you want to sing a
little of it? Well? Now do you know Bologne has
a first name? It's O S c A R. And
(14:54):
the plot plot fiz fizz. Oh, what a relief. It
is like these things get burned into the collective consciousness.
But um costanza, what's that from Seinfeld? Remember? Like George
gets a girlfriend because he uh, he associates his name
with that by men, and he goes Stanza and the
the woman doesn't even like him, but she can't get
(15:16):
him out of her head because that castanzas in there,
which you would call an earworm, which we've talked about
it feels like before, right, I think so, But we
may as well talk about the or verm. Is that
in German it's or verm and everyone knows it what
an earworm is. It's when it a song or a
(15:36):
part of a song gets stuck in your head. Sometimes
an explicably splica inexplicably, something weird got stuck in your head.
Like you wake up in the morning and the song
is in your head. You hadn't heard it in weeks, months, years,
who knows, but it's just there. And they don't really
know how it works either. No, but a couple of
(15:58):
very smart guys in the seventies got together. Their names
were Alan Badly and Graham Hitch, and they I think
they're responsible for coming up with the idea of the
working memory. Well they went on to write The Hustle Um,
but the Badly and Hitch first, Um, I guess I've
(16:19):
investigated working memory. And they came up with this thing
called the the phonological loop, right, which is an earworm
or a snippet of music or a a sentence, whatever,
it's running around. You can almost see it facing this
track in your head over and over again. That's the
phonological loop. And it's made of two parts, right, the
(16:43):
phonological store, which is your inner ear which here's it,
and then the articulatory rehearsal system, which is you're driving
yourself totally insane by saying it over and over repeating.
It's how we learned to talk or learn a foreign language. Um,
and they think that this phonological um loop is basically
(17:06):
an earworm, hitching a ride on this neurological process that
we have naturally and basically exploiting it for commercial purposes. Wow,
happens more in women, supposedly, more musicians supposedly, And if
you have O c D. It might really present a
problem with you. That was a really good episode of ours.
(17:28):
If you ask O c D. We talked about David
Sedaris licks light switches. I think yeah, in his book
he did. I don't know if that's real. I think
it is, though, Um, how to get rid of an earworm?
There's all kinds of things you can try, like actually
hearing the song in full um, Like, Um, if you
(17:52):
can't get call me maybe out of your head, right,
just go listen to call me. Maybe sometimes singing it
yourself all the way through. You can do it. You
could sing call me. Maybe you could vanquish it from
your mind. But there's really no sure fireway that those
are justiciable tricks. I heard someone say something about listening
to rush, We'll get rid of its? Was that what
(18:12):
it was? Because you just gets smart? Right? Um? Who's
professor Colaris. So he's the one who's basically he's a
University of Cincinnati professor. He's in the ear Warm article, okay,
and he has dedicated his career to basically exploring earworms
figuring out how to how they work. Um, I think
(18:36):
he's made a name for himself in it. He appears
in not one, but two how Stuff Works articles. So
he's arrived. So what he's done, um through surveys, he said,
it's obviously all up to the person is very individual
as far as what songs get stuck in your head.
But he put together, through some surveys what he calls
the playlist from Hell, and I would have to agree,
(19:00):
I'd like to see this updated because it's a little
dated a little bit. I mean, I'm sure that One
Party Rock is gotta be at the top of the list.
I don't know that One Party Rock is in the
pust to not do that at all. You're there's it's
literally impossible that you have not heard party Is it
a song? Yes, I have not heard it. I will
(19:21):
play it for you. You'll be like, oh, okay, is
it like a pop swan? Yeah, it's not a commercial.
It's everything. It's inescapable. It is the alpha and it's
just not possible. You haven't heard it all right, But
his playlist from Hell includes uh, the baby back ribs,
Chili's jingle which we won't even say out loud, the
(19:43):
Bajamans who let the Dogs out. That's a good one. Queens,
we will rock you. That's another good one. That's a
good one. But I don't, I don't know. That doesn't
strike me as particularly you're wormy. Um, give me a break.
It's a good one to ki at bar Uh the
Mission Impossible theme. I think it's funny that this is
(20:04):
on here because I had an experience with that when
I lived in New Jersey. It was when I think
the first Mission Impossible movie came out in YouTube did
the update of the theme. That thing was stuck in
my head for like three days. I was walking around
just going done up corners really quick and like looking
around doing a tuck and roll. It was crazy. So
(20:26):
it didn't surprise me to see that on here. Y
m c A, there's nothing wrong with that. I kind
of like this playlist. I wouldn't call it from Hell,
I'd call it maybe from hack at Best. Okay, Um,
Now I do hate. Um, the Lion Sleeps Tonight. I
hate that song. I think that's probably on there for
the very fav womb there it is by Tag Team
(20:48):
and other good It's a Small World. I guess that
one because you go to Disney World and you just
hear it over and over and over. Um, what ride
is that? It's a Small World? Is that the name
of the ride too? Yeah? I think so. It's been
a while, but yeah, so, Um, there's still plenty of
jingles out there. I'm trying to think of a of
a new jingle. Well, they're they're all over um sports radio.
(21:13):
Oh yeah, because I listened to a lot of sports
talk and me and my lead guitarist Eddie who you
know Eddie Eddie Cooper. Uh, we have been joking around
about doing um, like a medley of radio jingles in
our set, because if you listen to sports radio, man,
it's like the same ones like what well, looky, looky, looky,
(21:34):
here comes cookie alarm Force. I haven't heard that one.
Alarm Force. Ah. Oh man, I can't think of them,
but yeah, I mean there's just like if you listen
to any kind of sports radio, it's like the same ones.
The had that always sticks out to me when I
think of like sports radio, talk radio. Is that one
guy who's he's like trying to sell like some sort
(21:56):
of um REFI like, he's a refinance guy. He's like,
it's the biggest no brainer in the history. Or if
you've heard and this isn't even a jingle but a
full on song, if you heard any of the Blue
Belt ice cream commercials, I don't know, it's pretty great. Oh,
I mean they're all different, but it's all like this
(22:18):
guy singing about like you know, country morning and the
sound of birds chirping, and it's like the sound of
coming home is what you taste when you eat Blue
Belt ice cream, which is a lie. Um. But like
you said, they sort of have gone out of fashion
(22:38):
a little bit at least from the heyday, even though
they're still around. Yeah, they still they are viewed somewhat
as hokey. I think if you stop and think about
a commercial jingle or the concept of a jingle, it's hokey,
even though you probably have five hundred of them in
your head that you could recall at any moment exactly.
But yes, if you are say, um, the company responsible
(23:00):
for running VW's advertising campaign. You're probably not going to
use a commercial jingle. You're trying to go the other route,
which is to appropriate a pop song. Yeah, and the
v WS case, they used Nick Drake, which great one,
the song Pink Moon. Yeah, that's how I came to
find out who Nick Drake was. That's how a lot
of people came to find out. And that's what the
(23:20):
article points out as a lot of times they can
resuscitate careers, although in his case he passed away, but uh,
he definitely like was way more popular after that commercial
than he was before. Um. Stereo Lab was also VWA.
Uh who else? Um. I don't think they needed any help,
but it was like a perfect fit. The Polyphonic Spree,
(23:42):
Oh yeah, they had that there. I can't remember the
name of the song was like their huge hit. Um
that was on a VW commercial, Like when VW first
came out with the New Beatle Hey and shout out
to a Toby right yeah, Toby he he's shooting him
feature film right now? Yeah in Louise Na, Like he's
shooting it. Yeah. Toby's a friend of Josh and Yummis
(24:03):
who was in the Polyphonic Spree. And now he is
Ah did he really? I don't think I knew that. Yeah,
he was like, uh, friends with a couple of them
and said, hey, you know, I want to be in
the band. What do you need? And they're like, how
about Theoreman? And back then anyone could be in the
Polyox Spree and it was huge, it was extensive. Um.
And he went out and bought a Thereman and taught
(24:25):
himself how to play it and came back. I was like, ah,
I don't want to be in and he like went
to Japan. Um like toured the world with the with
the spree for a while. That's the spree. Yeah, Um,
that's awesome. And he's making a movie now. Yeah, well
you know they had that short he produced one Ye
starring Bonnie Prince Billy. It's amazing. Now they're onto something else.
(24:48):
It's like a feature film the same same company. Um. Anyway,
pop songs getting back to that, Uh they credit the Beatles,
UM seven Nike commercial. I would Nike famously use Revolution.
Do you remember that. Yeah, it's kind of starting this
whole new wave of let's use like pay a lot
(25:09):
of money to use really popular songs because it's not
enough anymore. You can't say our brand is better than yours.
You like, you want to identify your brand with a uh,
the public consciousness and a lifestyle like um, that Cat
Stephen's song Wind of My Soul and like the Timberland
ad that kind of struck where it's like, put these
(25:32):
shoes on and you will automatically went for that. I
am too. I'd like to look into that. I wonder
if he doesn't have the rights. It doesn't seem like
something he would do. There's no way he doesn't have
the rights to the song. But um, it is kind
of you. You raise a point like it is surprising
that he would have gone for that. But apparently if
you work on artists long enough, or just wait for
(25:55):
them to grow old and need money, they will eventually
cave or think he didn't need the money. But who Sting? No,
I doubt if he did it because he needed the money.
I guess that's right. He has a castle. He did
it for a reason though, and it was probably money.
Um So in the eighties when Sting was still because
you know the Police started out as a punk band, yeah, um,
(26:18):
and in the eighties it was postpunk, but Sting still
thought of himself as a pretty cool dude, and apparently
I don't know the company, but they approached Sting and said, hey,
we want to use don't stand so close to me
for our deodoric commercial. It's a terrible idea, and he
very wisely said no way. But then Jaguar said, hey,
you know this terrible desert rose thing you have going on,
(26:40):
we want to use that for our egg campaign and
Sting said, way right. The cheers to that, uh and
that's a big you know, bands get accused of selling
out uh less these days, I think because especially smaller bands,
you just you know, you people think music is free now,
so that making money selling records like they used to.
(27:03):
They break even on tours, these small bands, So I like,
I've done a one eight. Used to think like, I
don't sell out, but now I'm like, dude, make whatever
money you can while you can. I know, Band of
Horses one of my favorite and Jerry's favorites. Um, they
were kind of taken in the map by some of
their fans because they did they license her movie to Chevy,
(27:24):
and the dude Ben Bridwell came out. It was like, no,
you know, I drive a Chevy it's old and maybe
now I can get the A C fixed. You know,
he drives an old pickup chucking. He's like, what's what's
the problem, Like, we're trying to make a little dough here,
and it's a product I believe in, you know. Um
they're that part in the movie The Doors where like
(27:46):
two Morrissons like off on like whatever for a while
and comes back and sees that, like, um, light my
fire has been Chevy commercially the ray Coniff singers or
something doing it, and he's likes catchy tune that starts
breaking sty that brings up my my biggest pet peeve
(28:07):
today is this new thing and it's not super new
because they've been doing it, but it's like worse than
it's ever been. When they will take a great classic
song and bastardize it and have some like Lady Session
singer come in and sing like Satisfaction by the Rolling
Stones but in a different way and talking about being
(28:30):
like satisfied with your you know, your new car, and
it's just it's all over the place now and it's
just the worst. Like I would rather hear someone licensed
their real song then hear them remake it with some
awful session singer and change the words to fit their product,
you know what I'm saying. But then that corporation would
take the Ben Bradwell stands and Ben Bridwell Ben Bridwell
(28:54):
stance and be like, hey man, we gotta make our
quarterly earnings. Yeah or not true. I was being totally facetious.
That doesn't count. It's not the same thing or the
other thing now that um like, the Black Keys are
suing Pizza Hut right now because what companies will do.
And Tom Waits to sue people a bunch of times,
like every other year he sees someone because they'll go
(29:16):
in and they'll say, give us something, Tom Waits, he
or boy listened to Gold on the Ceiling by the
Black Keys, can you do something like that? And these
you know dudes that write these songs basically rip them off.
And the Black Keys are watching Pizza Hut and they're like,
wait a minute, that's my song in a different, slightly
different way selling pozzones and so we're going to see
(29:38):
you and take you to court. And that's when they
get in court and like compare them side by side,
and you know Ray Parker Junior famously yeah, yeah, got
messed up because he apparently ripped off I need a
new drug. We lose song, that's right, and I never
really heard it, and then finally I it clicked and
I was right, Oh wow, that is really sicky. Settled
(29:59):
he lost that would be settled or what, But he
definitely lost that case. I guess finally we should talk
a little bit about product placement because, um, but we
had a whole product placement episode. Oh yeah, that's right. Well,
obviously with TiVo and DVRs now, people are speeding through commercials,
so you are going to find some product placement in
(30:19):
your shows, quite possibly our own even it happens. But um,
there are better ways than others to do it. And
if you want a good laugh, go to the YouTube
and google soap Opera Cereal and um just watch it's great.
That's all I'm gonna say. I watched that the other day.
(30:40):
It's so funny and awful. It's just it's colossally bad.
But it's so bad that like it's earned a place
in the pantheon of pop culture now, so it did
his job. Yeah, I bet you. There's a lot of
hits on that on YouTube. Honey, what are you doing?
Just having some delicious hunting that cheerios. Boy, these things
(31:02):
really packed in fiber and the thing. It's like a
seven minute long scene. Yeah, it was like they just
started talking about cheerios the whole time. Yeah, it's pretty funny. Um.
And there was a little product placement right there for
your cheerio. So it's all over the place. Bonus. No,
I mean just now, no, but I'm saying, jeez, all
we did was talking about brands. If we don't cook's
pest control is a check. Yeah, we're just combined. Get
(31:26):
the termites out of my house. I want to check. Um,
let's see. If you want to learn more about commercial jingles,
you can type those words into the search bar at
how stuff works dot com. And I said search bar,
which means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this.
(31:46):
You remember you asked for good uh good causes in
the white collar crimes. Yeah, this one was from matthe
Ands Georgia. Oh hey, so it made the cut. I've
been there. Uh love the show, guys. And now a
segue into a shameless plug right to the point for
a nonpro off it in Athens, Georgia, I represent free
I t Athens FREDA. It's an all volunteer um nonprofit
(32:08):
and it is a grassroots organization dedicated to reclaiming discarded
technology like computers, refurbishing it and distributing it to those
in need. That's great, it makes perfect sense too. I think,
in fact, I have some old stuff I could donate.
He know, there's golden There's like all sorts of rarrors
and precious metals that like, if you in the computer
bind them like a bunch of computers, you'd have low
(32:32):
cold nugget. Yeah, well maybe I'll do that instead. We
serve mostly low income populations that cannot afford the latest
and greatest technology. We also aim to reduced e waste
through computer reuse and responsible recycling. We are currently in
need of working laptops for a volunteer program. I know
a whole room full of them. Seriously, laptops are distributed
(32:54):
to volunteers that complete our computer refurbishing program. We're interested
in laptop computers that have been aid within the last
five years with little to no damage. Donating your computer
can change someone with life, and imagine you can write
that stuff off. You know, we really should see what
they're gonna do with those, see if we can get
good to discuss. Uh, donating can change someone's life. I
(33:15):
already said that, but it can really change someone's life.
Financial donations are also welcome, so you can visit www
dot free I t Athens dot org and thank you
so much guys. That is from Joel Isler in Athens.
Thanks Joel, appreciate that. It is a very good cause.
We'll see if we can help. Thank you. If not,
(33:37):
we're in addition to hopefully there's a lot of listeners
in the Athens in Atlanta area that can help. Agreed,
or people can mail them from all over I'm sure
you could, or just go there and give them a
little cash, give him tin bucks. Oh yeah, you can
do that too. What was it a free I t
Athens dot org. That's right. Nice. Um. If you have
(33:58):
a commercial jingle, we want to hear it. Send us
a link some great forgotten commercial jingle we want to
hear about it, um, or the worst one ever. Yeah,
let's just start talking about this. Let's get a conversation going.
You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you should know, and you can send us an email
(34:18):
to Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Works dot com
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