Jingles Jangled.

When I was a boy growing up in a treeless suburb just about twenty minutes from my father's agency's offices at 247 Park Avenue in Manhattan, my world fairly crackled with commercials for various local beers. Everyone's world did. 

No one in my parents' small home drank much beer. My mother used a bottle now and again to put "body" into her hair, prior to setting it with rollers. And she might have kept a few bottles in the fridge for a workman doing some sweaty summer job that my father wouldn't do and my brother and I were too young to manage. But beer was a blue-collar drink and my parents had six-martini-lunch aspirations.

Still, baseball was the sound track of the era (we lived less than a dozen miles from Yankee Stadium, the house that Ruth built--and years later--Steinbrenner desecrated.) In those days, and it seems almost crazy today, baseball was played during the daytime, under the sun, when it was meant to be played and the game was on on every radio.

In fact, like an Einsteinian exercise in time, light and motion, you could run down your block and not miss a moment of the game. The pitch might have been thrown in front of the Pearson's at 102, the call "ball" might have been heard thirty feet south in front of the Robinson's at 106, and the ball might finally have been hit at 112, in front of the Evans'. By the time Ellie Howard was dusting off his flannels and standing up from a slide into second, you might find yourself at 120, in front of the Fried's.

Accompanying the soundtrack of the game, of Red Barber and Mel Allen, were myriad beer commercials. 

Commercials when I was growing up didn't aspire to be "cinemagraphic." Or even high-falutin'. They aspired to sell stuff.

They understood the audience they were addressing. These weren't PhD-candidates from the Ivy League. They were Ralph and Ed. They were guys punching a clock. They were shower after work guys not shower in the morning guys.

What's more, copywriters and art directors creating commercials for this audience, weren't talking about "lensing." In fact for the first 30 years of my career, I never had to pretend to care about what DP we were using and his award winning cinematography from his obscure classic that no one saw and everyone admired.

So, worried instead about getting ear worms and their client's products lodged in bona-fide customers' head (not award's juries) they used ancient story-telling devices like jingles and repetition that have been working since your ancestors and mine made the move to bi-pedalism.

Right now, I'm reading Daniel Mendolsohn's new and widely- praised translation of Homer's Odyssey. Unlike advertising which lasts about a week, the Odyssey has lasted about 2800 years. It's still being read, enjoyed and learned from today. At least among those who take the time to read it.

What's more, the Iliad and the Odyssey are the structural basis for about every story you're likely to see on Netflix, in the movies or from the Marvel universe. Hero gets lost. Hero screws up. Hero can't get home. Hero gets home. 

Homer (not Homer Simpson, not Steve Simpson, Ogilvy's former CCO, my boss and friend) understood a thing or two about reaching audiences. Homer wasn't thinking originality. He was thinking "imprinting." Getting ideas and characterizations in his audiences' head. That often happens when you repeat things.

For instance, here are just a few mentions of "Dawn" (not the dish-soap) from Mendelsohn's faithful translation. The description of Dawn, of Odysseus, of Athena hardly varies. It was a repetitive memory device in a era, like ours, when most people can't or don't write things down.

All that leads me back to my youth. A long-time ago. When advertising agencies were more Homeric with their output. Schaefer Beer shared the airwaves with Rheingold Beer, Ballantine Beer and an occasional national brand. 

Everyone in New York knew the Schaefer jingle. My guess is that 97% of New Yorkers who are my age know it now. And probably 94% of New Yorkers who are my age and have early-onset Alzheimers know it still.

Because it was repeated.
Because it was simple.
Because it was liked.

Because they kept it fresh.

It's easy to disparage, no matter their efficacy, no matter how long humans have been using them, old ideas and old techniques. 

It's easy to disparage memory devices.

That kind of stuff is too old.
It's corny.
It's passé.

It ain't cool in Williamsburg.

Disparage things all you like.
Just don't cross Homer.