Jingle

A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. The jingle contains one or more hooks and meaning that explicitly promote the product or service being advertised, usually through the use of one or more advertising slogans. Ad buyers use jingles in radio and television commercials; they can also be used in non-advertising contexts to establish or maintain a brand image. Jingles are a form of sound branding. Many jingles are also created using snippets of popular songs, in which lyrics are modified to appropriately advertise the product or service.

History

The jingle had no definitive status: its infiltration of the radio was more of an evolutionary process than a sudden innovation. Product advertisements with a musical tilt can be traced back to 1923, around the same time commercial radio began in the United States. If one entity has the best claim to the first jingle it is General Mills, who aired the world's first singing commercial. The seminal radio bite, entitled "Have You Tried Wheaties?", was first sung over the air on Christmas Eve of 1926 in the Minneapolis–St. Paul radio market. It featured four male singers, who were eventually christened "The Wheaties Quartet", singing the following lines: