We’d always done radio ads.  They weren’t mindblowing, but a lot of people responded to them.  You’d get people calling every single week saying, “I heard your ad on the radio.  You buy used CDs?”  Radio ads were also expensive, so obviously you wanted to hit a home run every time.

What I didn’t know is that we had a radio jingle.  I didn’t know until I started getting prank called by kids.  I’d pick up the phone, hear a couple kids giggling, and then recite this jingle to me.  Then they’d laugh some more and hang up.  I was perplexed.  I had no idea what they were singing.  

I went to one of the people in Operations.  “These kids just called me singing this song with our store in the words.  What the hell was that?”

“Oh that’s our radio jingle.  Haven’t you heard it before?”

Hell no!  If I had I’m sure I would have spoken my mind.  Later on I heard the actual jingle.  It wasn’t…bad…it was just…not good.  Today, it still haunts my darkest dreams.

Back in the day, the boss used to always ask our opinions on our ads.  “What do you think of this one?”  We’d throw in our two cents.  As the company grew we weren’t consulted anymore.  I’m not sure who was consulted, but it sure wasn’t us!  We had no issues being honest, positive or negative, and maybe we just said “that sucks” one too many times in the past.  Either way our opinion wasn’t sought.  But mine sure was given after the fact.  When kids start pranking you making fun of your jingle, that’s probably not a good sign.

The funny thing is, Meat already came up with a much better jingle.

Him and Tom used to eat at this greasy spoon place in (I think) London.  Tom used to say, “Man, the food here isn’t good, but it’s cheap.”  Meat would respond, “Yeah, just think about the money you save on the food.”  And that turned into a jingle.

In his best Michael McDonald voice, Meat would close his eyes tight and croon, “Think about the money you saaaaaave on the food!”  It was hilarious.

So, the next logical step was, “Think about the money you saaaaaave on the tunes!”  Perfect! 

The jingle was never used.  But what do I know?  It’s not like I’ve ever had my own theme songs played on the radio…

Thanks Marko Fox for the sound clip of the first broadcast of my custom made Marko theme!