Banking advice
In the mornings, I listen to the local talk radio for news and weather. And one thing they always have is commercials for banks. And in all of these commercials, they have a song. As in, seriously, they pay for someone to write a love song about their bank. The songs are not catchy and the lyrics are forced into the music. And I’m not going to pick a bank based on its theme song. Who thinks this is a good idea? And who wastes money on this?
April 3rd, 2012 at 10:18 am
Commercials used to feature a jingle or a catch phrase that stuck in your head. I can still remember commercials from 40 years ago…I’ll probably be on my death bed humming “like a good neighbor, soup is good food” or something. Most commercials today don’t seem to have any connection to the product they are selling and are very un-memorable.So to me, even a bad jingle is a step in the right direction.
April 3rd, 2012 at 10:19 am
The same folks who thought sub prime lending was a good idea
April 3rd, 2012 at 10:20 am
Thats almost the feeling i get when i see superbowl adds for chrysler’s shitty cars,
at least you dont have to pay for the bank commercial, er scratch that.
you probably did paid for that one too.
April 3rd, 2012 at 10:35 am
There’s a bank near here (Earthmover Credit Union) that has a very catchy jingle that people remember.
April 3rd, 2012 at 11:37 am
They’ve been doing it since before The Carpenters turned a bank jingle into a hit song in 1970.
April 3rd, 2012 at 12:27 pm
If the music makes put your guard down and have good feeling about doing business with that bank, then it works.
April 3rd, 2012 at 12:30 pm
You’re not complaining about jingles. You’re complaining about bad ones. In this cause, I join you.
“O come with me, shy Phyllis dear
to yon blue mountain free”
made a Studebaker man of me.
April 3rd, 2012 at 12:43 pm
Whatever. This is genius…
April 3rd, 2012 at 4:15 pm
I remember the Carpenter’s jingle and the now defunct/merged Crocker bank, founded by one of the Great Robber Barons.
But I don’t think jingles have the same brain-stem catch they once did, not with the pervasive diversion of the iNterWebtubeZ and everyone stumbling around with Androids and iPhones, plugged-into Condition White.
April 3rd, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Around here, one of those that stick like an ear mite is
‘First op-tion Mort-gage/
The people you call–First!’
It’s like an evil little haiku, stuck in my brain, displacing useful knowledge like how many rounds go into a Walther magazine or something.
April 3rd, 2012 at 8:28 pm
Music in most commercials is a detraction, not a benefit. I don’t get it either, but then I think that most people’s idea of a “proper” commercial is one that sounds like other commercials. Most jingles are written by start-up musicians or music students with no understanding of marketing and little respect for the target audience, to satisfy some small business that may not understand marketing either.
Most radio commercials I hear are more likely to make me want to avoid the business. Most of them are downright insulting, just lame, or frustrating in that you can’t understand all the words (because of the stupid shit music) even if you happen to be interested in the product.
It took me weeks to figure out what one business was trying to say. “Au Franz Caullessé, Ah Yea” turned out to be “Our Friends Call us AIA”. Of course it wasn’t spoken, but sung, by music students hired by the other music student in charge of writing and recording the jingle, for a local business on a small budget, and the poorly enunciated words were half drowned out by the instrumentation.
Sure; the recordist understood the words, because he’d had them given to him in print by the business, and the business person in charge of getting the ad done understood the words, because he wrote them, but…
April 3rd, 2012 at 9:41 pm
Of course, most businesses that advertise on radio or TV use jingles. Yes, most are bad, but it still counts as publicity; you may not patronize the company w/the annoying jingle, but you’re not likely to forget it either.