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