Jingle
From Free net encyclopedia
A jingle is a memorable slogan, set to an engaging melody, mainly broadcast on radio and sometimes on television commercials. Jingles are memes constructed to stay in one's memory (colloquially, "ringing a bell"). People often nostalgically remember jingles decades later, even after the advertised brand has ceased to exist. Nowadays the most common form of a jingle is a radio station's on air musical or spoken identity. The most famous musical identities both past and present include jingles heard on WABC/WPLJ, WLS/KIIS-FM, Z100 New York, KOST, and KHJ.
Jingles were used on radio from the beginning, and the art of jingle-writing was well-honed by the time television became widely available. The golden age of jingles was during the US 1950s economic boom. Jingles were used in the advertising of branded products such as breakfast cereals, candy and snacks (including soda pop) and other processed foods, tobacco and alcoholic beverages, as well as various franchises and products that might reflect personal image such as automobiles, personal hygiene products (including deodorants, mouthwash, and toothpaste) and household cleaning products, especially detergent.
Jingle can also be used as an English language term describing the ringing of a small bell, such as the kind found on a telephone, or a series of round ones on a string used at Christmas time, such as in the song Jingle Bells. The expression, "Give me a jingle", means "Call me on the telephone", an alternative to, "Give me a ring."
Jingle can also be used to refer specifically to the disc-like cymbals (usually made of brass) arranged around the frame of a tambourine. That term is referenced in The Byrds hit song, Mr. Tambourine Man, and also mentions the "companion" word "Jangle" which is often used with "Jingle" for emphasis. Another example of that usage is the old-old cowboy song, "I've got spurs that jingle-jangle-jingle as I go riding merrily along".
Jingle is also an extension to the Jabber protocol, jointly developed with Google Talk allowing the sending of multimedia (in this case, VoIP).