Jingles in Advertisements: Can They Improve Recall?

Wanda T. Wallace, Duke University

The traditional approach to studying music in one of the two ballads five times and recalled the
advertising has focused on the effect of music on words of Ihat ballad in writing after the first,
attitudjs towards the advertised product (Gom 1982; second, and fifth repetitions. After learning an
Kellars and Cox 1989; Maclnnis and Park 1990), additional song, subjects were asked to recall the
the coisumer's mood (Alpert and Alpert 1990), and song they had learned once more in a delayed recall
the consumer perception of an ad containing music task. The time between the last recall and the
of any form such as the perception of an ad being delayed recall is about 15 minutes; however,
upbeal, informative, etc. (Stout and Leckenby 1988). learning tlie additional song is somewhat disruptive.
Music has also been shown to infiuence the The subjects in this experiment are
consumer's pace while shopping and eating undergraduates with no particular expertise although
(Milliinan 1982, 1986). All of these papers address most subjects had a few years of choral expjerience.
more of the affective side of the consumer response According to pretest measures, no participants were
as opposed to the cognitive side. Within a more familiar with the ballads to he learned.
cognitive perspective, music has been viewed as a Two different ballads were used in the
distraction (Park and Young 1986). experiment; however, since there were no differences
In contrast to the above approaches, the between tlie ballads this factor will be ignored here.
currenc paper talces a strong cognitive approach and The set of three verses from each ballad contained
considers how and when music might serve as a 80 or 85 words. Both the sung and spwken versions
recall aid. Some experiments supporting this view of each ballad were equally understandable and were
are pjrusented. performed by the same pjerson.
Music in this paper will be primarily lyrical The percentage of words recalled verbatim was
music rather than background or nonvocal music. calculated for each subject. The basic results are
Althoi:gh some of the ideas can apply to nonvocal presented in Figure 1. A repeated measures juialysis
music, that is not the focus of the investigations. of variance (ANOVA) with condition and ballad as
Also, :he paper considers unique, novel lyrics between subjects factors and trial as a within
written for a particular ad rather than old songs subjects factor compared verbatim recall for sung and
imporled to or adapted for an ad. Although again, spoken conditions. As expected, performance
some of the ideas have a direct application to the improves across trials (E(2,120) = 598.96, s. <
use of well-laiown music. .0001). More importantly, both overall (F(l,60) =
Why might music aid or improve memory for 19.95, j) < .0001) and at every trial, verbatim recall
an ad? First, consider how difficult it can be to get is significantly better for the sung condition than
a jingle out of your head when you have heard it for the spoken condition. After five trials, recall is
several times. Whether or not you like the jingle is very good, averaging about 86% of the words
irrelevant; you just can't seem to stop humming it. recalled verbatim in the sung condition and 76% in
One well worn example is the Oscar Mayer song. the spoken condition. Even witli such high recalls
Just srying the brand name is usually enough to on the last trial, there is still a significant
start part of the jingle playing through your mind. advantage for the sung condition in the delayed
Second, jingles seem to be easily recalled even if recall task (E(l,63) = 12.49, c < -001). Mejm
they hive not been heard for years. For example, verbatim recall for the sung and spoken conditions
the Mounds/Almond Joy "sometimes you feel like a at the delayed recall task are 81% and 67% words
nut" jingle was just recently revived for a Mounds ad correctly recalled, respectively.
campaign because consumers consistently reported
remembering those lines even though they had not Music however does not always result in
been aired for years (Dagnoli 1989). improved recall. One such limitation involves the
repetition of the melody and how easy it is to learn
There is some experimental evidence to
the melody. In a follow-up experiment (Wallace
support the notion that music can improve recall
1990) to the one described above, the first verse
(Wallace 1990). This experiment involves ballads
rather than advertisements. The advantage of using from each three-verse ballad segment was excerpted
balladii is tliat they are novel melodies which are from the original tape. Subjects received the same
mostly unlaiown and the texts describe simple instructions and the same procedure as in the three-
events and ideas. Since these stimuli are purely verse case. That is, subjects heard either the sung or
auditoiy any potential interaction with or spoken version for one of the two ballad segments
interference from a visual display is eliminated. and were asked to recall the verse as close to
verbatim as possible after the first, second, aind fifth
In this experiment, subjects either heard three
repetitions. After learning additional material,
verses of a ballad spoken or the same three verses
subjects were asked to recall the verse again in a
sung and then recalled in writing the text they had
heard. Subjects laiew in advance that they would be delayed recall task. However, in this experiment the
asked :o recall the text. In addition, subjects were results differ dramatically from tliose in the pmor
instructed to recall the text as close as possible to experiment.
the exiict, original wording. Subjects listened to The advantage of hearing the ballad sung that
is found in the three-verse case reverses when
239 Advances in Consumer Research
Volume IS, © 1991
240 I Jingles in Advertisments: Can They Improve Recall?

FIGURE 1
Recalls for Three Verse Segment

100

Trial

subjeets heard only one verse. The spoken the sung condition. Here, subjects recall the one
condition results in better verbatim recall than the common verse between the two experiments equally
sung condition (E(l,35) = 4.29, jz < .05). At the as well, regardless whether they must leam two
first and fifth trials, the difference between the sung additional verses or no additional verses. Therefore,
and spoken conditions is only marginally those subjects hearing three verses sung have a
significant (F(l,35) = 3.79, E < -06 and F(l,35) = definite advantage at recall even if they do have
3.86, n < .06, respectively). On the second trial, more material to remember. In addition, the music
the difference between conditions is significant appears to be a distractor when subjects hear only
(F(l,35) = 5.26, E < .03). Finally, in the delayed one verse. Perhaps this occurs because subjects
recall task, no effects or interactions are significant. have not yet had sufficient rehearsals of the melody
Thus, once the verse is well leamed, there appears to to make it salient or clear. Even though subjects
be very little long term difference between verbal hear the melody five times in the one-verse
recall of material that was sung and material that was experiment, they should not leam the melody as
spoken. Perhaps over a very long period between well as when they hear it in a multi-verse context.
leaming and recall, such as months or years, a In the three-verse context, encoding variability
difference could emerge. should facilitate leaming (see Hintzman 1976 for a
review). Since the music is not sufficiently leamed
Even though the differences between to facilitate recall, it becomes a distractor. In the
conditions are borderline on the first and last trials tliree-verse experiment, subjects must leam the
and nonexistent in the delayed task, the results melody better and/or be better able to use that
clearly indicate that music is not a facilitator as in melody as a retrieval aid.
the prior experiment and that music can serve as a
distractor. It is important to keep in mind tliat the Music provides a very powerful retrieval cue.
verse heard in this experiment is identical to the Music is more than just an additional piece of
first of the three verses heard in the prior information, it is an integrated cue that provides
information about the nature of the text. The music
experiment. The only difference between the
defines the length of lines, chunks words and
experiments is that the first group of subjects heard
phrases, identifies the number of syllables, sets the
and recalled two additional verses which the second
pattem of stressed and unstressed syllables within
group of subjects did not hear.
the text. Thus, the music acts as a frame within
Part of the difference between the one-verse which the text is tightly fit. Tliat frame can connect
and the three verse experiments could result from a words at encoding, limit retrieval search, as well as
decreased cognitive load. For recalls of the common constrain guessing or recreation at retrieval.
verse between the two experiments, subjects in the
For example, the melody could assist subjects
one-verse spoken condition have better recall than
in distinguishing one verse from the other by
those in the three-verse spoken condition because of
making each verse a coherent unit. In addition, the
the reduced cognitive load. Nevertheless, that same
melody could cue subjects to search for lines to fit
advantage of reduced cognitive load is not found in
 Advances in Consumer Research (Volume 18) I 241

FIGURE 2
Recalls for One Verse Segment

100

I I I I

Trial

points within the melody thus reducing the chances points of emphasis. In order to be memorable, the
of a subject omitting a line. Furthermore, the music should also have a simple form with a basic
struccire of tlie music, that is the rises and falls in pattern of ascents and descents, and a clear
the melody, tlie accents, et cetera; accentuate rhythmical pattern. These musical factors should
particular components of each verse and thus may facilitate learning of the musical score as a frame or
make it more memorable. At this stage in the retrieval cue. English and Scottish ballads Ihat are
experimental work, tliese mechanisms are not still sung in North Carolina contain these musical
mutui.lly exclusive and cannot be distinguished. properties (Wallace forthcoming). Since this is a
There are some limitations to interpreting tradition that has been passed from generation to
these results for advertising. For one, subjects in generation by word of mouth for two hundred years,
this experiment were attempting to learn the song it is reasonable to assume tliat they are in a good
whereas consumers watching an ad are not likely to form to facilitate memory. Thus they provide one
give !is much attention or effort to the ad nor are example of memorable melodic structures.
they likely to try to recall the ad, although, on By considering music's effect on recall, I
occasion, consumers may make an effort to recall certainly do not intend to imply that all music does
the brand name or perhaps a new brand claim. is improve recall. Certainly there are emotional
Secord, these recalls are reported as verbatim recalls reactions to music which may spread to attitudes
which again is an unlikely scenario for advertising. about the product. Music also probably serves many
However, gist recall and verbatim recall are additional functions as well.
correlated. Given the emphasis on learning the In conclusion, there is evidence that music
material, a verbatim recall measure is a reasonably can improve recall of a text and there is reason to
stringent measure. In conditions for which expect that this will hold for jingles as they occur
consumers are not intentionally learning material, within an advertisement.
recognition or gist measures should be comparable
in difficulty to the verbatim measure used here.
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