Radio 4 has been celebrating 70 years of British advertising, and to mark it, they hit the streets of Salford to ask shoppers: what ads do you actually remember?
The answers? No surprise. The jingles. Moonpig. We Buy Any Car. Those irresistible earworms you find yourself humming under your breath in the supermarket aisle. Short, sharp, and absolutely unforgettable. They don’t just make you sing along, they keep brands front of mind. And for a brand, that’s half the battle won.
Of course, jingles aren’t the only way to stick. Pair sound with a strong creative idea, and you’ve got dynamite. Darren Bales, Chief Creative Officer at VCCP, remembers the thinking behind the Compare the Market meerkats:
“ Let’s do an idea that’s slightly off the wall. With meerkats, we want to do funny jokes, silly things, and we want to entertain people because it’s financial management, it’s a very dry sector, so the more colour and fun we could bring to the world, the better. ”
Darren Bales
VCCP CCO
Insurance, but make it entertaining. The meerkats didn’t just advertise, they became pop culture and their catchphrase has become a nationally recognised sonic glue.
Bales knows odd can be powerful. He points to KFC’s “All Hail Gravy” campaign:
“ Really, really odd, but again, just making sure you’re not ignored, and starting conversation with your audience.
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Darren Bales
VCCP CCO
Attention is scarce. Better to be weird and talked about than slick and forgotten.
And sometimes, it’s the soundtrack that makes history. A Radio 4 caller remembered the impact of Levi’s Laundrette ad, soundtracked by Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through the Grapevine:
“ I was a teenager in the 1980s, and when the Levi’s ad came on, one of my sisters would shriek ‘It’s the Levi’s ad!’, and we would all come running. ”
Radio 4 Caller
That’s the kind of cultural pull brands are still chasing. Gap’s recent Katseye commercial with the re-record of Kelis’ Milkshake had the same effect, breathing life back into a fading brand by pairing it with a track that oozed star power. With now over 30 million views on YouTube, suddenly, Gap is back on the map.
If there’s one lesson that rings loud and clear from 70 years of advertising, it’s this: sound sells. From jingles you can’t forget to pop tracks that redefine a brand, music has always been the shortcut to memorability.
Seventy years in, the landscape has changed. The jingles, the meerkats, the milkshakes: different decades, same principle. The ads that matter are the ones that stick. The ones you hum, the ones you laugh at, the ones you tell people about.
Attention is more scarce than it's ever been since the dawn of the first TV commercial, but there’s been a recurring theme - the brands that have harnessed the power of music and sound have created some of the most powerful ads of all.
