You may not be able to hum them right now, but you’ve heard them: coffee jingles.
Perhaps you’re of a certain age. Then you no doubt remember Folgers Coffee’s jingle, “The Best Part of Waking Up.” (The company still uses the jingle today.)
The sound of a coffee percolator percolating became the “jingle” for Maxwell House Coffee. The jingle has no words, but the staccato beat of the coffee against the percolator’s lid is iconic for several generations of American coffee drinkers.
Brim Decaffinated Coffee’s jingle was “Fill it to the Rim with Brim.” (The company even co-opted the song “Let’s Twist Again” by Chubby Checker when it advertised its freeze-dried product (in a container with a twist-off lid.)
Coffee ads today don’t use jingles. In fac , few companies today of any type promote their products with the catchy short tunes, preferring instead to use “standard pop songs.”
Once Upon a Time: A Short History of the Jingle
While no one can pinpoint exactly the arrival of the type of advertising, most of those in the know about such things believe Wheaties cereal used a jingle (sung on the radio by a barbershop quartet) in 1926.
Jingles’ heyday spanned the mid-1940s (after World War II and the subsequent growth of the massive consumer market that continues today), with the best jingle writers making a fortune.
The song “I’d like to Buy the World a Coke,” commissioned by the Coca-Cola Company in 1971, was possibly the first original, full-length song created as an advertisement (the song actually was released as – and became — a very popular pop song.) Short, catchy jingles still were used by advertisers, but more and more companies veered away from the short ditties to the longer, original songs.
Advertisers eventually started purchasing rights to rock and roll classics for use in commercials. The most notorious – because it was one of the first – arguably is The Beatles’ “Revolution,” used in a 1987 Nike Air ad. (How Nike was able to use the music without the Beatles’ permission is an interesting, complex story. The surviving Beatles sued Nike, reaching an undisclosed settlement.)
But back to the jingle, that short, likeable tune that’s just SO hard to get out of your mind. We daresay its very catchiness helped make coffee as popular as it was back in the day, and helped keep that love-fest among Americans going through today, as our love affair with the beautiful dark elixir continues – and even grows in popularity.
We have no jingle for our premium, fair-trade, organic coffee, Ubean Coffee. We haven’t commissioned someone to create a pop song for us, nor have we acquired the rights to any classic rock, pop, punk, or rap song.
Instead, we let our delicious, premium ground coffee “sing” for itself. Contact one of our independent distributors today.