Remember Sarah Ripley, the future of marketing?

She emailed me a link to this TaB commercial from the olden days (well, the ’80s).
Her observation was that with only a jingle, the commercial was very simple. No voiceover, no copy, no actors reading lines. Couldn’t be easier.

I was curious about another thing.

After I watched the ad, the jingle was stuck in my head. Don’t you just hate that?

“TaB cola has a beautiful taste
So good for beautiful people
TaB cola beautiful to you and me
‘Cause every can has less than two calories
TaB cola helps a beautiful shape
Just right for beautiful people
TaB cola tastes so good to you
Great taste low calorie TaB”

The line that stuck with me was “So good for beautiful people” and again near the end, “Just right for beautiful people.”

I got to thinking about it. You could never say that in spoken copy without sounding like a total jackass. “Enjoy TaB, the preferred drink of beautiful people.”

How strange that you can sing it, and slip it right past the judgmental left brain. Huh.

A good jingle can be very powerful. Because music is processed by the right hemisphere of the brain, you can take in a message and remember quite disturbing thoughts if you do so in lyrics. Think about songs such as the MASH Theme, Mack the Knife and any country song about adultery.

So, it was actually quite brilliant of TaB to slip in an unspoken message through song rather than announcer voiceover.

Can you think of any other jingles that do this to us?