News

Songs that sell

June 16, 2005

It's one thing to have a phone number that's easy to remember, but it's another thing to connect it to a song that buries itself inside customers' minds.

"When people are making a decision on where they'd like to eat, you want them to think of your phone number first," said Shawn Timony, marketing manager for Topper's Pizza, in Sudbury, Ontario. The 32-unit company has used a radio jingle for years. "For any takeout-delivery company to not have a recognizable phone number is one of the worst mistakes you can make. Your phone number essentially becomes your brand."

Timony said the power of a catchy jingle is impossible to ignore. A few exposures via radio can result in faster and deeper penetration than door hangers and flyers.

"Statistically, it takes about three connections with a customer for a message to sink in," he said. "And if you look at something like radio, you can hit a customer three times in one hour, if not more. If you send someone a flyer, they'll look at it once and shove it in the drawer, and you have to hit them two more times."

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But don't move to toss out your print campaign, said Dwayne Boudreau, marketing director at Greco Pizza in Truro, Nova Scotia. Good print advertising amplifies the musical component of an advertising program by promoting it visually.

"We tie it in a few different ways with a graphic that uses musical notes, and we also call our number the Pizza Number," Boudreau said. "Tying all three together becomes our key message ... which helps differentiate us from the independents."

Much more than music

Mae West once said, "Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big, black space where the audience is."

Advertising is "like screaming into that big, black space," said George Axon, president of Axon Branding in Mississauga, Ontario. An advertiser can yell into the void all he wants, but if that message is going to stick, Axon said, it's got to have personality.

"What we try to do is add 'memorability' and personality to an advertiser's message, but technically, what we're doing is branding," said Axon, whose company creates commercial brands, including jingles.

A good jingle starts a sort of jukebox of the mind that plays that song over and over, said Stuart Goldberg, also of Axon.

"That repeated musical hook, that company's theme line, is that laser shot into the mind of consumers," Goldberg said. "Their minds are so crowded with marketing messages that you have to have a laser shot into them to keep (that message) there."

Having a custom jingle isn't the cheapest form of advertising, but it's more affordable than many think, Axon said. The money spent by Toppers, Timony added, is well worth it.

"It's allowed us to produce very high-quality radio spots, which we've gotten a lot of life out of," he said. "I would call it a valuable investment."