Jingles and slogans from commercials are meant to be catchy. For Boomers (those born from 1946 to 1964) and Gen Xers (those born from 1965 to 1980), hearing certain songs and phrases from back in the day can bring them right back to their childhood.
These jingles (also known as earworms) never seem to fade away from memory, and that’s on purpose. It’s part of the marketing science behind how they’re made.
“The way that we store music in our brains is a lot different from text, numbers, things like that. It goes a lot longer into our past and we remember music a lot longer than just a string of words,” said Seth Ketron, assistant marketing professor at St. Thomas University, in an interview with CBS News.
Ketron added, “We tend to pay attention to what we call peripheral cues. And so those are things like jingles, the attractiveness of a spokesmodel or just the sheer number of arguments they make. People will pay more attention to that stuff than they will the core message of the argument.”
Why these jingles stick around for decades
And for Boomers and Gen Xers, hearing jingles from commercials and ads also triggers nostalgia.
“Music is inherently bound up with personal identity, and so [when people can] identify pieces of music without a lot of information, it’s often music from their youth [which can trigger] what we call the reminiscence bump in autobiographical memory,” Dr. Kelly Jakubowski, assistant professor of music psychology at Durham University in the U.K., told TIME in 2022.
She went on to explain that earworms are “when we get a song that pops into mind without you actually trying to recall any music,” and “when we perceive or imagine music that’s quite meaningful to us, we get activation in what we call the reward centers of our brain.”
Simply put, these jingles really do make you feel good, too. Boomers and Gen Xers on Reddit shared 22 of the most memorable slogans and phrases from jingles that they still know and love.
The 22 slogans people still remember
“Ancient Chinese secret…We need more Calgon!! ” – Electronic_Pen_7161, Agathocles87
“Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is! (Alka Seltzer). ‘I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.’” – cordialmanikin, EarlVanDorn
“HeadOn apply directly to the forehead. Thank god.” – sfw3015
“Raise your hand if you’re Sure!!” – ActiveDinner3497
“By Mennen.” – danrydel
“‘Where’s the Beef!’” – Enough_Equivalent379
“I am stuck on Band-Aid because Band-Aid is stuck on me.” – pinkbowsandsarcasm
“Takes a lickin’ but keeps on tickin’.” – archedhighbrow
“You’re not fully clean unless you’re Zest-fully clean!” – ElanEclat
“My bologna has a first name …” mauispiderweb
“‘Could’ve had a V8’. I love saying this when someone does something stupid/forgets something/regrets something. The blank stares I get especially from the youngins.” – JoeTurner89
“The little Burma-Shave signs with rhymes.” – RunsWithPremise
“Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!” – gladmoon
“‘Let your fingers do the walking’.” – freewiffy
“Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us, all we want is that you let us serve it your way…. Burger King.” – ActiveDinner3497
“Sometimes you feel like a nut.” – my_clever-name
“Krazy Glue… used to show a construction guy with his hard hat glued to a cross beam. When I was a kid, I thought he was up really high in the air.” – Agathocles87
The ones from the ’70s and ’80s hit hardest
“Fine Corinthian leather.” – Subject-Vermicelli52
“Give it to Mikey- he hates everything.” – legreyfox
“Double-A (beep beep) M-C-O. AAMCO Transmissions.” – TrifleMeNot
“Certs is two, Two, TWO MINTS IN ONE!” – Fluid-Impression3993
“7-up… the UNcola.” – MrStrype
It’s wild that decades later, most of us can still recite these slogans word-for-word, jingle and all, without even trying. That’s not an accident. As Ketron and Jakubowski both point out, our brains hang onto music and rhythm in a way they just don’t hang onto plain information, and advertisers figured that out a long time ago. So the next time “Where’s the beef?” pops into your head out of nowhere, you can blame your brain. Or just enjoy the trip back to a simpler era of advertising.
This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.
