Do ad jingles make an auto dealer’s advertising campaign successful? One of the clients I worked with in my early advertising agency years was the National City Mile of Cars. The Mile of Cars is a group of auto dealers in National City that get together to advertise their area. I was tasked with scheduling and negotiating mostly Television advertising time and some radio carrying the jingle, “Wanna get on down, get on down to the Mile…”
The ads hit every local San Diego market TV station consistently. It was hard to find someone who hadn’t heard the jingle in those years. Sometimes I’d sing the song when I talked with a new person about my work. When the Mile of Cars changed agencies in the early 2,000’s I wondered if they stopped advertising. I couldn’t remember their ads and still question if they cut back their media spending or if it’s just that their ads aren’t as memorable. Around the time of the split, I remember too that the dealers were all crying for a new ad and the partner creating them didn’t want to do it. The dealers said the ads were too tired, but I think now they should’ve stayed with the jingle, or at least updated it.
Our agency was responsible for counting the number of cars that were sold the weekend prior at each of the Mile’s dealerships and Mossy Nissan was by far the dealer that sold the most cars there. It wasn’t even a contest for a close second, and guess what, they also had a jingle, “Mossy Nissan, Mossy Nissan moves you.” Here’s a vintage version of the jingle.
As I was doing research for this article I saw a post on Yelp and someone had commented they were singing the Mossy Nissan jingle at work and couldn’t get it out of their head. Sometimes as consumers we think jingles are annoying when that happens but top of mind awareness is the goal of most advertising campaigns and that’s what a repeated song in a consumer’s head does.
Growing up in Los Angeles, my siblings and I used to sing along whenever the Cal Worthington and his dog spot commercial showed up announcing “This is Cal Worthington and his dog spot”. Then the jingle would start with a bouncing ball following the lyrics, “If you want a car or truck go see cal…” Those ads, with various modifications, ran for 30 years, from the 1960s to the 1990s and aired on every Los Angeles area Television station. In the late 1980s during the time of his dog spot commercials, he spent $15 million on ads and it was the most ad expenditure of any auto dealer at that time. Earlier this decade, Worthington’s dealerships spanned across the West and at its peak he had 29 dealerships, owned three shopping centers, and one office tower grossing $600 million a year. Here’s an old one
So, based on these successful examples, I’d say jingles are a good way to advertise an auto dealership along with a healthy budget to place the ads on air.
But, jingles aren’t just limited to car dealerships. According to Forbes.com, the best-ever advertising jingle is Coke’s “I’d Like To Buy the World a Coke”. Watch it here
