Try Out The Jingle Generator
Have you tried the QuickBooks jingle generator yet?
The folks at QuickBooks created an interactive jingle creator. You go online, enter your business name and a few other bits of information, choose one of 20 small business types (accounting, retail, pet, tech, blogging) and voila, you get a jingle created. It’s all done to the 1980s rock song “Your Love” by The Outfield.
The jingle generator is hosted by “legendary music producer Tommy Silk.”
I was puzzled for a few minutes by “Tommy Silk”, having never heard of him before. I went to Google and well, the funny thing is, this “legendary” producer was nowhere to be found in the search engines prior to August 2008.
Digging a little deeper, I found a humorous press release by Intuit, which has this footnote:
Tommy Silk is a totally fictitious character, created solely for the promotion of theJingleGenerator.com because we didn’t have the budget to hire someone famous or use their name without getting our pants sued off. Any resemblance to real music moguls, living or dead, is purely coincidental. So there.
In case you’re interested, the “legendary Tommy Silk” character even has a Twitter account: http://twitter.com/TommySilk
Rachel over at Intuit sent me a link to the jingle they created using my name and the name of this site about blogging: “I wonder what I’m gonna blog about today. I’m just going to blog for you today….”
It’s a viral marketing technique for a product (accounting software) that normally doesn’t lend itself to viral.
August 8th, 2008 at 11:15 am
How funny. This is one way to sure attract attention to your product or company.
August 8th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
thanks Anita! We had (and are having) such a good time working on this campaign. It’s a great way to have a little fun as the summer winds down.
August 8th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
This is epic! I love how when you float your cursor over a click-able link it turns into the “rock hands” (is there a name for that sign?) — nice attention to detail.
August 8th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Very funny. Thanks for sharing this.
I will fall for Intuit’s evil plan and share this with my readers and Twitter followers, too. (with a hat tip to SBT of course)
Scott Fox
http://www.ScottFox.com
August 8th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
This reminds me of several other viral applications I’ve seen. Another of my favorites was the Tide Talking stain. What I love about this is the sense of fun and personalization. Although, I can imagine many people asking themselves the question “What’s the return for something like this - or is it all just for the sake of entertainment and building some sort of connection or relationship?”
August 9th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
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August 11th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Hi, Anita.
Thanks for sharing this. I tried it out and it was fun. Though the jingle was not perfectly made, of course, but the site’s creativity and interactivity is awesome!
August 11th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Hi,
I am a mother of two and is planning to build my website for business. I sought for advice and queried in Google and was directed to this site. The articles here at small business trends are really great for aspiring entrepreneurs like me.
Anyway, this post of yours is definitely fun and I was really having a good time when I tried that jingle generator.
Bookmarked your site. Great to came across here and will definitely be coming back for more.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
This is great! What an inventive idea, too.
Ivana, I LOVE that commercial because it’s SOOO true. They gave that little stain a life of it’s own - but it works. That commercial is stuck in my mind and when i see it, i run to watch it, too, and have a laugh. They’ve caputured the actual effect a stain can have on people perfectly as a distraction. I think they should keep using the stain in several more commercials as a sort of mascot, too. It must work because they’ve made me connect with their product through that advertisement.
August 11th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Hey All,
I’m Jackie with theJingleGenerator.com and I’m so glad to hear you are having fun with it. We’re all still getting used to Tommy’s hair over here but we’re having fun too. In addition to the catchy jingle you can get on the site, there is also free accounting software available for download.
Oh, and here is a message from Tommy Silk for those of you who don’t know him: “I want to help America’s entrepreneurs get back to business like Michael J. Fox got back to the future, so I’m giving my jingle services away for free to all. Log on and rock on!”
Have a great week everyone!
-Jackie, theJingleGenerator.com
August 14th, 2008 at 7:04 am
Hilarious! Is it Austin Powers’s cousin? So much 80’s…
I had to create my own EGO jingle. I will send it to a friend who has worked as a DJ and done music mixes. http://aaneke.notlong.com