According to a writer, this is why she rang me. "I was looking for something quirky and you seem to do a lot of quirky!" Or something along those lines. I have to say she is probably right, though I am not convinced that is completely my doing, after all I do get briefed by someone along the line. But is there any sort of rule as to when you should do quirky and when you should be doing something a little more straight down the line?

Jingles can get used in two very clear-cut ways: They can be used for a specific campaign or they can be used as a long term brand identity. This is especially true on radio where jingles do have a pretty clear place when it comes to helping things stand out; after all radio is rather short on the visual effect side and listeners don't tend to sit staring inanely at their Wireless - they have better things to do while listening.

The temptation is to leave the more idiotic ideas I have for specific campaigns; it is often easier to write a narrative jingle or something mad if you know it is only going to be used in one way and you have a very simple idea to get across. But this is also unfair on those clients who cannot justify spending their jingle budget on just one outing - they want to get a few years out of their investment if they can! And why not? But inevitable a clients message does change over time and if the jingle has not been planned carefully in advance, the quirky composition may simply not fit the brief so well as time goes on.

A straight jingle is very much more predictable; it is designed primarily like a logo with some extra background for the words to fit over which ever direction the message may be headed. For many clients this is not just the safe option, but also probably the ideal one; they can use it in its full version, or just bring it up at the end, and the writer can play with what they need to do quite happily. So, the question has to be, can the quirky jingle also do the job of a straight one? Well, I think it can, and it is down to how the jingle is written and produced, and possibly what your definition of quirky is in the first place!

Making someone smile, making something comedic, can be done in a couple of different ways, and really the Marx Brothers, with some help from Chico here, managed to pull both off. The most obvious way is the slapstick clown where everything from the music to the vocals is mad, twisted and probably at ninety miles per hour. Any Marx Bros backstage chase would probably qualify here. A jingle written with that in mind, where the writer would have no choice but put on top a mad voice over may well have limited use unless that style really does match the product precisely - a kids' play palace for example. For everything else it is going to get problematic after a while.

The other side of comedy is a little more subtle and can be used more cleverly. This side can be demonstrated by Groucho Marx when he famously said, "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know." Like many of Groucho's quotes, they are fast, funny, but they work whether you say them with a silly voice, of keep it deadly straight. They don't need slapstick to make them quirky, they are already left of field and don't require the extra help. That is pretty easy to translate to a jingle, and most of my quirky stuff sits in that area somewhere.

I have a love of things, especially on radio, that makes the listener say "what?" Next time the ad comes around they tend to listen more carefully and that is one of the things we really want them to do! A quirky jingle that has, none the less, well produced music and vocals, can do that very well indeed. If I take something, say, a little bit Country, and record the vocals, "The General Store - The best shop in town," then the message is clear, the music is uplifting and it will do the job. However, with a slightly braver client if we change the vocals to "The General Store - Where the staff are Cute," then, with any luck, the listener will blink at least once. And if they do that, we have their attention next time. Clients can react well to this stuff too. One client, listening to my show-reel, picked up on an ad for a scrap car dealer. "We want your car, rust-bucket," goes the line, playing towards the more slapstick side of life, to be honest. However, what attracted the clients attentions was the end line where the character says "bring them to mummy!"

Although the jingle was mad, it got is quirky award at the end, mostly, I suspect, because it was unexpected and the listener blinked. This sort of approach not only allows us lots of fun, but means the jingle has a life beyond the initial joke, and that suddenly makes a lot of sense to the client with their limited budgets. I like to look at these in a sort of one-in-four scenario. We write a mostly sung, quirky jingle that is used to hammer a brand idea home every fourth spot that the client buys. However, for the other three, we use a sub mix with far less vocals (and therefore less of the quirkiness) that allows the client to list all their offers, there phone number, or whatever. Both versions of the ad raise a smile because the full version does all that hard work, and the client still gets across that needed information and a nice long life from their musical investment.

There are some very good reasons why the Marx Brothers are as sharp today as they were seventy years ago. Their comedy was complex and layered where a line delivered straight could be as funny as a piano landing on the leading lady's foot. Finding that balance in advertising, and especially with musical advertising, can draw the listener in and keep their attention - and all it takes is a bit of working out. As Groucho said, "The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made."

JS