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While other kids my age had their sights set on being an all-star quarterback, world-renowned bioscientist or genius-inspiring teacher, when I was 15, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a professional jingle writer when I grew up. My dad had run an ad agency and at the time, produced all the identification commercials for the local NBC affiliate, often letting me write the music.
About a week after I graduated college, I left West Virginia for New York City, crashed in my aunt’s basement in Livingston, NJ and gave it a go. I got an internship at a big jingle house in NYC and after a few days, I thought to myself… “Holy shit. This sucks.”. That particular week, 8 or so in-house jingle writers were frantically composing and revising a pitch for Fruit Gushers snacks that only one of them would get. It was a lot of fake hip hop beats synced up to smiling faces and the sounds of kids cheering and I remember the late 90’s Pro Tools rig taking up about half of the room. Scared and uninspired, I returned home to WV and continued being in my original rock band. Playing my own music in front of tens of college kids around the country was a no brainer.
*Yo! It’s squirty chemicals that taste like fruit!*Since then, I’ve maintained doing a few jingles a year. The communication with the ad agency or client never gets easier. Often, the only directive from the suits is “Well, as you know, our logo is red so….” or “We want something uptempo but not fast.”.
Recently, I got asked to pitch a jingle to a big toy company releasing, of all things, an ATM-card that kids could use to buy endless items in a board game. While I don’t think Quicken for Kids would be a big hit, this pretend credit card definitely didn’t preach fiscal responsibility to pre-adolescents.
Usually, when asked to pitch a jingle you get the brief, which contains the basic gist of the product and the music they want for the cue. For this cue, the agency said:
Think sophisticated, fun, sing-able and memorable; lyrics will be simple and relatable for all. The lyrics will be all about the benefits of having money to buy anything you desire- and loving it.
Sometimes, there is a story board or a reference song (in this case, just about every “four on the floor” hit out now) but my favorite part by far is the agency-provided lyric ideas. These are lyrics written regardless of any meter, rhyme scheme or common sense that the jingle writer has to adapt and incorporate into the final song.For this specific jingle check out some of the wordsmithery:
(Spoken in that cool- talk-your-way-into-the-music way):
Are you all ready? ‘Cause this is gonna be big. No- wait- huuuuge……
It’s all about my plastic-
My wallet is elastic-
I’ll be spending extreeeemely-
So people enveeee- me-
I’ll be wearing some big bling-
When I go yacht-ting-
So with ALL of that in mind, I wrote this jingle pitch which was ultimately passed on for a very popular current hit. It’s a 30-second shitshow of auto-tuned pop to educate kids about the wonders on unchecked American capitalism called “All About My Plastic”. Hope you enjoy.
Click right hurrrrr… “ALL ABOUT MY PLASTIC”
