Where have all the jingles gone?

With multiple channels and ‘idea and visual-based ads’, the sing-song way of endorsing a product has taken a backseat

While watching Amitabh Bachchan doing all the tricks to get a bite of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate, you miss the jingle Kya swaad hai zindagi mein, which was once associated with the product.  Sadly, catchy jingles that were once easily memorised and strongly associated with their respective brands, are missing today from TV commercials.

When television made its first appearance with just Doordarshan, most families—from age nine to 90 would relish whatever they were exposed to; be it the rukaawat ke liye khed hai or the few ads that came along with fewer shows.

Ideas vs song
Piyush Pandey, executive chairman, Ogilvy & Mather India and the man behind the classic Chal meri Luna, believes that lack of creative ideas then made the ad industry focus more on jingles. “Commercials then focussed more on jingles and less on ideas. Today, jingles are created only when there is a need to complement ideas.  You and I from Hutch is an example of a jingle, which was created to support the idea,” he says.  Truly, the ‘idea rich’ ads we see today seem to be a reflection of the way consumers have grown. It’s also an offshoot of the fact that a few decades back the Indian economy and audiences were not globalised.

Jingle jungle
It’s also cited that the development of personal entertainment mediums other than TV-such as i-Pods, mobile phones, mp3 players and computer games are giving stiff competition to TV. Hence, the recall value of jingles is also lesser.

Agnello Dias, chief creative officer, JWT (ad agency) disagrees that jingles are no longer in. He reasons, “You may remember only 10 jingles from the old days. But I can recall 10 good jingles from the past year itself.” Some of the recent memorable jingles Dias cites include Nescafe, Hutch, Vodafone, Airtel, Parachute, Happydent, Coca-Cola and Close-up.

Evolved audiences
Prasoon Pandey, director, Corcoise Films says, “There are equally good jingles being made today. Some jingles have become memorable because they were played on air for almost five years. Then there was less competition. Today there is so much clutter in the market that it becomes hard to remember a jingle two years down the line.” He adds, “The ads may have become more visual today. That’s got to do with the comprehension capacity of the audience. The audience has become sharper and doesn’t want to be spoon fed.”

But for  jingle lovers all is not lost. They can still relive them by downloading them from the internet and flaunt it as their caller tunes or ring tones!

a_ankit@dnaindia.net