Love it, loathe it or feel indifferent, but the festive season is well and truly approaching. And, this year, more people may well be planning to go big on their celebrations compared with the last, given the easing of coronavirus restrictions. So your customers should be starting to feel festive – and ready to spend.
Christmas sounds can evoke quite strong, intimate emotions. Think about how the Christmas songs you know and enjoy (or hate) make you feel. And consider the lingering importance of the seasonal Number One record, despite the era of downloads and digital streaming.
So it’s definitely worth considering a special Christmas jingle, whether you run a radio station, are a DJ, or want a seasonal ad for your brand or a podcast. That could mean taking what you already use as a base, and adapting it for the festive period. (Which, by the way, could be a great idea if you have an ad that’s already performing strongly.)
At a time of year when feelings can run high, and competition is particularly intense, it’s especially important to get your festive jingle absolutely spot-on if it is to be remembered and stand out for all the right reasons. You also want people to share ads and jingles via their social networks. Here are some tips to stop your jingle from becoming a (Christmas) turkey:
- Avoid religion – while it’s clearly what Christmas is all about, and why we celebrate the season at all, it’s also a potentially sensitive subject, so probably best avoided. Think about how you can be thoroughly Christmassy in other ways.
- Strike the right balance between focusing on what the season means to you and keeping the jingle more broadly relatable.
- Jingle bells – few sounds sum up the time of year better than the old sleigh bells! These obviously immediately identify your jingle as a Christmas soundtrack.
- Catchy and upbeat – while all radio jingles should be catchy, that’s particularly true of Yuletide ones. Keep wording simple yet relatable. And, given that it’s meant to be a happy time of year, go for a major key and upbeat tempo. A survey by Berkley College of Music found that the most popular holiday hits incorporated 115 beats per minute.
- Are you being funny? Think again – somehow, Christmas isn’t really an occasion where humor is likely to go down that well. You’re better off appealing to the emotions at this time of year, when shoppers are making decisions based on their heart rather their heads. So it’s the strong emotional responses you should be going for, rather than belly laughs.
- Don’t be negative – it’s not a great time to trash the competition through your advertising or jingles, even though we’re sure you wouldn’t be doing this anyway. But one year Asda mentioned a rival in its Christmas campaign; a risky strategy which did not prove popular.
- Don’t release it too early – this may sound like an obvious one, but don’t go releasing your jingle when children have scarcely got their feet back under their classroom desks after the summer holidays. As a general rule of thumb, stick to playing seasonal jingles in December.
- You don’t need a celebrity – you may be tempted to get someone well-known – even a minor or local celebrity – to record your jingle. But research has shown that ‘everyday heroes’ are more likely to go down well with listeners at this time of year.
In short, the best-performing ads will give listeners multiple reasons to share them, either because they make them feel Christmassy, and encapsulate the season’s ethos of goodwill and giving, or because they just make the listener feel warm and happy.
Talk To Experts
At Music Radio Creative, we create festive jingles for a range of different settings, for podcasters and radio stations to DJ sets. There also is our royalty-free music and we can help you come up with the perfect festive jingle or use something you’ve devised yourself. We love this time of year, and want your listeners to love it as well. Browse our website, or get in touch for a custom quote or some ideas unique to you.
