Being Accessible is a Big Mess-able.

When I talk to other humans about advertising (this happens about once every three months) if they're on a wave-length similar to mine (this happens about once every three years) we often wonder why jingles and mnemonics no longer hold any sway in the advertising we see (that is, if we see advertising at all.)

Most of us of a certain age remember rhymes and ditties from ads that have kept a rent-free place in our brains for half a century or more. Many of those ads, we remember with fondness--though we likely haven't seen them for half a century or more. 

The Brits were always better at these things than amerikansche were. Beanz Meanz Heinz takes the legume. Or the cake. But at one time, there were agencies and people who worked in them and people who worked for brands who practically demanded memory devices in their ads. 

As soon as I get home from school

I ask Mum ‘what’s for tea?’

And hope that she says Heinz Baked Beans

’Cos they’re the beans for me

There are lots of ways to eat them

You can have them on your toast

I like to eat them with fried eggs

Or with a Sunday roast

I like them with fish fingers

With sausages they’re great

The only time they’re not is when

They’re on my brother’s plate

Sometimes when I’m feeling sad

My mum will read the signs

She knows the thing to cheer me up

And she knows that Beanz Meanz Heinz

We've convinced ourselves, against all common sense, that advertising clutter or message inundation is a new thing. Actually clutter is a tale as old as time, as is needing to do something memorable to a) overcome clutter or b) punch above your weight.

Late last week, I stumbled across this obituary in The New York Times.

I'm a better amateur historian than I am professional copywriter but I remember exactly two things about John Tyler. 1) He became the first vice president to become president when William Henry Harrison died just thirty days after being inaugurated. 2) Harrison was called "Tippecanoe" because he killed a bunch of native amerikans there. His campaign slogan was "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too." A damn good rhyme.

Rhyming works. As the Economist notes in the article that prompted this post: 

"...the brain is “hardwired” to notice rhymes, says Samuel Jay Keyser, author of “Play it Again, Sam: Repetition in the Arts”, a new book. Other things reveal this too, such as the sheer ease with which you can detect rhymes in a text. A rhythm can be hard for you to see. That last sentence, for example, was in iambic pentameter, but you probably did not notice. Noticing rhyme in text is easier: if it’s got it, you can spot it.

The first commercial I remember I probably last saw in 1961 when I was three years old. And now, roughly 64 years later, I still remember every word.

When I was young in the business I sold a print campaign to Nabisco about a line extension of A1 Steak Sauce called A1 Poultry Sauce. Back in 1984 people weren't in the habit of dipping food. My partner and I created a dozen or twenty quarter-page units that explained how to use the stuff. 

One of them read "How to inspire a fryer." 

A lot of people in the agency made fun of me for that line. "It rhymes," they mocked. How dare I do something potentially memorable.

Today's dearth of ditties, jingles and other mnemonic devices has always puzzled me. I knew they weren't considered "cool" by the industry's "awards-industrial complex." They could probably get you fired, in fact.

Just now, an article in The Economist explained why. They write:

At the start of the 19th century, around half the population was literate; by the start of the 20th, 97% was... In an era of low literacy the mere ability to read a poem set someone apart; as the era of mass literacy dawned, another marker of intellect was needed. It came in the form of modernism.

In the 20th century, many art forms became “more abstruse, inaccessible and difficult to appreciate”, says Steven Pinker, a professor at Harvard University, “possibly as a way of differentiating elites from the hoi polloi”. Any fool can enjoy an enjoyable thing, but only a committed intellectual can enjoy an unenjoyable one. By the mid-century, rhyming lines had fallen by half.

Maybe, if we were honest, we’ll concede something similar has happened in advertising. 

We got too elite to create communications for the hoi polloi. Or as my mother might have said, "we got too big for our britches."

Very often I'll see a commercial that will say nothing and show virtually nothing. There will be a sullen woman driving in the rain. We'll follow a single rain drop down the pane of a window. The announcer will say a single word: "Confidence." And we'll cut to a logo. These things are shot as if by Sven Nyquist. 

As if we're making an art film. 

As if people care.

We're not. And we don't.

We're making commercials.

And we're acting like dicks about it. 

I repeat from above: Any fool can enjoy an enjoyable thing, but only a committed intellectual can enjoy an unenjoyable one.

Maybe we should try to be enjoyable again.

Fun.

Laughter.

Empathy.

Not snobbery.