I will be revealing my age and stage in life with this posting but I have an inner compulsion to write about today's television advertising practices.
Please bring back the jingles and the readily recognizable characters and brand names. You know, the ones that were product-specific and that had a tune that you could hum and that stuck with you or had a character (take Tony the Tiger, for instance.) Obviously, for me, there was something catchy about those jingles, characters, and silly product names because I can still hear and see many of them in my head.
Here's some: "Bryl-creem....a little dab'll do ya." Dippety-do Setting Gel: The pinkish red color was regular and the green was extra-hold. I can still remember setting my hair in curlers - at first the pink plastic and foam kind and later the brush curlers that were murder to sleep on - and slathering on the Dippety-do, in the hopes that it would somehow make my hair more manageable. The old Chevrolet commercial (Now the company only wants to be known as "Chevy".) that had the jingle, "See the USA, in your Chevrolet". What about Alka-Seltzer? "Pop, pop, fizz, fizz, Oh what a relief it is!" and the goofy little character with the little stick and the big, flat-topped hat. The original Mr. Clean jingle. The memories go on and on.
Today's commercials can be memorable but not in the same way as the "oldies". The products, for the most part, are different, which says a lot about our society, but consumers are also vastly different. Our tastes have changed, our wants and desires have changed and our attention spans have been greatly reduced from thirty, forty and fifty years ago. Now we require pizzaz, glitz, glitter and glam to keep our minds focused on the product-commercial before us. Heck, now we devalue commercials so much that special machines and software have been developed to extract the commercials so we never see them. Or, if we do not have the software, subscription or machine with which to "discard" the commercial, we then simply hit the "mute" button until the regular program resumes.
Even if a person does suffer through multiple television commercials, they are devoid of the catchy tunes, jingles, phrases and characters that could make them memorable. Often, the background music is a copyright-protected rock or pop song, not a jingle that was written just for the product. This makes me think that the "jingle-writing" industry has seen its bottom drop out and float away.
For now, I will close. I have to go eat "the incredible, edible egg". OK, "the incredible, edible egg-white."
It's just so not the same.
Ancora imparo
