Template jingle
Since I'm thinking about ad jingles..... One local business has produced an absolutely brilliant jingle.

Most radio jingles have a brief version, a full version and a concerto version. The brief version is 5 or 10 seconds long, just the first two lines of the jingle. The full version is in conventional song form: first two lines, a bridge section, then da capo al fine. The concerto version sings the first two lines, then fades into a background form (continuo) for 20 seconds while the announcer solos about this week's specials, then da capo.

Northwest Seed and Pet follows these forms. The short version is just

"Northwest Seed and Pet: Our hometown service makes you smile."

The concerto version sings those two lines, then the chorus smoothly fades from the /l/ of smile into a slow progression of chords on ooo. After the announcer's solo is done, the chorus crescendos up to normal volume and runs through three short ooo chords leading smoothly back into the /n/ of "Northwest Seed and Pet: Our hometown service makes you smile."

All very smooth and silky, never a millisecond of silence.

This summer's version:

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"Northwest Seed and Pet,
..

..

..






ooo ooo ooooNorthwest Seed and Pet: Our hometown service makes you smile."

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Regular listeners contain the short and long versions of often-heard jingles. Those are part of our long-standing radio template, part of our perceptual baseline. When this new version skips the second line and breaks into pure silence instead of OOO, we WAKE UP! Where's the OOO? I want my OOO! When the wind-chime starts binging and ponging, we ask WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? And when the announcer starts talking about wind chimes, the dissonance is fully resolved. Aaaah. Now I see.

Brilliant. A fully-formed short story in 30 seconds.

If you want to acquire an understanding of human perception and behavior, stop reading "social" "science". Everything you read under that rubric is negative knowledge. Worse than false. It sucks real knowledge out of your mind.

Just listen non-verbally to the skills of marketers and advertisers. Those folks KNOW.

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This particular trick is rare because it requires a long-term constancy and an assumed customer memory. Johnson's Wax pulled it a few times in the Fibber show. For three or four years Mr Wilcox showed up in every episode to extol the virtues of Glo-Coat or Car-Nu. Wilcox generally had a nominal piece of the plotline or jokeline, but you learned that his real purpose was to give the sales pitch. In the fourth year the variations started. Sometimes Wilcox would show up, play his part in the plot, and leave. Molly would say to Fibber "You know what? He forgot to mention the product." His "forgetting" served two purposes, just like the wind chimes. It woke you up, and it forced your inner jukebox to play the missing parts. You sing Our hometown service makes you smile, or you recite the benefits of Glo-Coat. You sell yourself.
  ¶ 8:28 AM