#auditoryperception

Who could possibly forget the most memorable song of 2009-2010?

PHILIPPINES, 2015—The filing of certificate of candidacy is closed and soon campaign season will be in full swing. Be sure to expect that in the near future, campaign jingles will be as ever-present in local media as your typical Surf or Ariel commercial jingles.

If you’ve noticed, commercials have been dominated by music, whether by jingles or the background music which accompany the message companies want to portray. It might not even matter if it’s a political candidate they are advertising because in the end, they too are products, and the intent is to ‘sell’ them to us. And as for music, it is part of the persuasion. This begs the question: is music in advertising effective? That question, along with some others that might pop up along our discussion, is what we aim to answer.

When we talk of music in advertising, we tend to look at the effects of music on the perception of the product. Researches tend to study our attitudes toward a certain product or brand, or how the music affects the consumer’s mood (Wallace, 1991). For example, this tune—

—might elicit a calm, happy mood and a generally positive attitude toward the McDonalds brand, but is it effective? This depends on what our measure of effectiveness is. 

If effective = higher sales, then maybe it is (or it isn’t). McDonalds sales team can be the judge of that.

But what of effective = better recall of the brand? We are supposed to be the judge of that.

Recall Manny Villar’s campaign jingle. If we base the success of his campaign solely on his jingle, then his jingle might not be effective because he did not win the presidential elections of that year. However, it was a success when it came to establishing his brand. Hearing the melody or just the first few lines of the song is enough to strongly associate it with Manny Villar. Isn’t that some sort of success? After all, part of the advertising process is to build a memorable brand for the company or product. In other words, what use is the positive attitude induced by the music if the consumer (us) can’t remember what or who the product was? If you can’t remember it, then you can’t buy it. If you can’t buy it, that’s one less sale or vote for the brand.

In McDo’s case, do we recall it more when we’re presented with the above tune (”Hooray for Today”) or is it still the “pa-para-pa-pa-love-ko-’to” jingle that comes to mind?

Although it might be commonly believed that music is effective in creating positive associations and a better recall of information about a brand, research do not always support this belief. For example, 

do you sometimes find yourself remembering the music in an advert but not necessarily the message it conveyed? 

This phenomenon be particularly prominent when adverts use background music when an endorser is speaking. Sometimes the music just distracts us from the whole thing. It’s a different case, however, when the message is presented as lyrics in a song (i.e. as a jingle). 

Yalch (1991) conducted a study to test the effectiveness of jingles against simple tag lines. His experiments consisted of recognition tasks and aided recall tasks. In recognition tasks, the participants were provided the sponsor’s name and a set of possible slogans and they were tasked to recognize the correct match. In aided recall tasks, the participants were given the slogan and were tasked to retrieve the brand name from memory. In all experiments, the participants were either presented with jingles or with simple tag lines.

Lo and behold, his experiments revealed that:

There is greater recall of the brand name (associated with slogans) when it was presented in the form of a musical jingles.

Hey, it worked for Manny Villar didn’t it?

However, they Yalch (1991) did specify some limitations to its effectiveness. He said that:

Jingles are only beneficial when provided with minimal clues for retrieval (i.e. in aided recall tasks).

In other words, jingles only help when we lack other clues which facilitate recognition. When we’re presented with other information (or options for slogans) that might help recall, jingles did not exactly improve memory accuracy. What does this mean? It means that jingles are useful for their mnemonic value. Its usefulness diminishes as verbal information becomes more elaborate.

Jingles are beneficial when individuals have minimal exposure to the advertising.

In other words, jingles are more useful for low-exposure advertisements. This has big implications for brands that have low budget for advertising. It suggests that if an advert for a product is not frequently shown in media, incorporating the slogan in a tune might be the way to go for improved brand recall.

So does this mean that jingles should be avoided for high-exposure campaigns?

Not necessarily! Remember how we were bombarded with Manny Villar’s political ad? It seemed effective enough for bran association, right? That’s because music might have other beneficial effects. It might not aid learning and remembering, but it can alleviate wearout. Wearout is the effect of diminished attention because of the lack of new information presented. Enjoyable music, in this case, might be beneficial to forestall the effect of wearout.

So there you have it, folks! Let this serve as a reminder for advertisers and politicians to use jingles wisely.

BY Andrea Espino

References:

Wallace, W. (1991). Jingles in Advertisements: Can They Improve Recall? Advances in Consumer Research, 18, 239-242. Retrieved October 16, 2015, from http://www.acrwebsite.org/search/view-conference-proceedings.aspx?Id=7167