BREAK THE JINGLE STEREOTYPE
Some people hear the word “Jingle” and think “Ewwww. . . cheesy!”. And you know what? I don’t blame them one bit. A while ago I started wondering about this phenomenon. I mean, I know our jingles aren’t “cheesy”. I’m 100 percent on that. I’ve had real people say to me: “Creative Mills’ jingles are definitely NOT “cheesy”. So I decided to do some research. I checked out the competition. I tracked down every competitor I could find to just. . . listen to their jingles. And there it was: the “Cheese” factor. About 70% of what I heard did sound really “cheesy”. The main reason for that is bad melodies. Throw in a dash of out of date singing styles and music production and you get a real train wreck. You also end up with a valuable marketing tool (Jingles) getting a really bad rap.
Look, the point of this is not to throw shade at our competitors. Our Jingles sound like miniature hit songs. And here’s why. We write and produce like songwriters because we are songwriters. We’ve had a hit song on the charts. We’re constantly writing and collaborating with up and coming artists. It’s not good enough to just fill up 30 second with aimless melodies and mediocre singing and writing. Your jingle has to make people smile. It has to have heart. It has to be executed at the highest level. Good Morning, Good Afternoon, and Good Night. That is what we do. And we love doing it. As they say. . . why settle for the cheese when you can have the whole enchilada?
HEAR WHAT YOU'RE GETTING
So you’re thinking about getting a Jingle for your company. More than thinking about it really. You want a Jingle to musically brand yourself, but you’re not quite sure. You have questions: “What will it sound like? Will it do the job? Most importantly, will it be worth the investment? “ Of course, our answers to those questions are:
1. Awesomeness.
2. Oh yeah.
3. Absolutely.
But don’t take our word for it. If you’ve never considered music as a branding tool, how are supposed to know what’s good, what’s bad and what’s, well…blah? This is where the Speculative or “Spec” Jingle comes in. It’s a short, jingle that we do for you…before you pay a dime. We’ll go through the Jingle Process with you to determine your wants and needs. Once that’s done, we’ll head into the studio and create a killer musical Earworm for your business. Then, we give you the completed Jingle “Spec” to check out, and the “Free” portion of the “Let’s have Creative Mills do a Jingle for us” project comes to an end. But that’s okay. Because the “Spec” served it’s purpose. It allowed you to see how we collaborate with you to create and execute your vision.
If we all like how things are developing, we sign a Music Agreement, you put down a deposit, and we make any changes to the Spec that are needed…putting Final Mix elements in place, and producing a wide variety of Final “mixouts”, insuring you’ll have all the different versions you’ll need going forward with your marketing campaign. So, you really can hear what you’re getting.
IT SIMPLY CANNOT SUCK.
Successful Jingles can be a lot of things. They can be very “hooky”. They can be great earworms. They can have a great vibe. A great vocal performance. They can be exactly 29.9 or 59.9 seconds. That’s a pretty cool trick if you can pull it off. But here’s something I think we can all agree on: A Jingle simply cannot suck. It cannot be forgettable. It cannot be poorly executed. For example, a project we’re working on now, totally recreating a jingle that was butchered the first time around by another “jingle company” - singers weren’t hitting their pitches, bad melodies, you get the picture. But in order to stay out of “Suxsville”, you, The Client, and We, the Music Production Company, have to agree on a couple of simple rules before we commence. Ready?
Before we compose a single note, we begin “The Process”, which you can read more about here. “The Process” culminates in a fully produced and mastered jingle wholly based on your pre-production input, notes, and specific discussion about the musical style/direction. We then deliver your new jingle to you. And this is where the Rules come in:
1. Do not evaluate your new jingle using personal tastes and sensibilities. You’ve probably never been asked to professionally assess the efficacy of a piece of Branding Music (your Jingle) before. Nobody cares if it makes you go Wooo Hooo! and you want to put it on your workout playlist. The music and melodies have to be strong and extremely memorable, performed at a high level. That’s it.
2. Try to put yourself in the mind of your future clients when they first hear it. They are not going to be on their phone, hitting play on an mp3 while thinking “I hope I like it!!” Picture it: They’ll likely be sitting in their car or in front of the TV when your jingle will wash over them unexpectedly. And there it is. Right there. In that moment. That reaction is what is true and real.
3. You Have To Trust Us. We know that can sometimes be a hard thing to do. To put it simply – you are experts at what you do, and we are experts at what we do. 25 years of writing and producing relevant branding music as a job. Putting 3 kids through college doing just that. Those kinds of reps allow us to quickly sift through all the weak, worthless melodies that are out there and hone in the ONES that are perfect for your jingle. Fact: Our very worst jingles, you know, the ones that never make our demo reel, were always the result of our clients NOT TRUSTING US. Understand this: It is overwhelmingly likely that the very first fully produced/mastered Jingle that we send to you for evaluation. . . Is. The. One.