Writing jingle lyrics: fifteen words, name in the first three

Singing is slower than speaking. Roughly sixty singable words fit in a minute, against a hundred and fifty spoken.

So fifteen seconds is about fifteen words, thirty seconds is about thirty, and sixty seconds is about sixty.

Exceed the budget and the return rushes the lines. It drops some of them, or repeats the opening and abandons the rest.

Count before you paste. That check costs nothing and prevents the most common disappointment in this module.

Fifteen words is not a limitation to work around. It is the correct size for something meant to be recognised rather than listened to.

The price is 50 credits per attempt regardless of length, so a shorter jingle is not cheaper and a longer one is not better value.

Somebody is scrolling. They hear roughly three words before the thumb decides.

If the name arrives at word eleven, most of the audience has already gone, and the jingle worked as background texture for a stranger.

So the shape is name first, claim second, stop. Everything else is decoration you cannot afford at fifteen words.

Avoid setup lines. A jingle has no room for a premise, and a premise that arrives without its payoff is worse than nothing.

Concrete nouns survive singing. Abstract nouns dissolve into the melody and the listener retains only the tune.

If the words could belong to another company in your category, rewrite them, because the whole job of a jingle is being attached to one name.

A jingle becomes recognisable somewhere around the twentieth exposure and does almost nothing before then.

Repetition inside the jingle accelerates that, because the same phrase heard twice in fifteen seconds counts for more than two different phrases.

So the strongest structure is the key line, something else, the key line again.

Structure markers in square brackets, like verse and chorus, help the arrangement understand which part is meant to return.

You will get sick of the phrase long before your audience notices it, and that feeling is not a reason to change it.

Sing it twenty times out loud. If it still scans on the twentieth, it will survive a year of running.

Say the words out loud at singing speed, slowly, once. Anything you stumble on will trip a sung delivery.

There is no fixing a line after the track returns. No retiming, no stems, no way to redo one word.

So the stumble test is the last free step, and skipping it costs 50 credits per lesson.

Then generate five attempts at 250 credits, leave them overnight, and listen again in the morning.

The one you loved in the first hour is often the one you tire of. Novelty is loud. Familiarity is quiet.

The 1,000 trial credits cover twenty attempts, which is enough to do this properly inside the 7 days.

Play the shortlist to somebody who has not read the words. If they can repeat the brand name back after two listens, it works.

If they cannot, the name is either too late in the line or buried under the arrangement, and both are fixed by rewriting rather than regenerating.

That test takes two minutes and it is the only external check available before the thing runs for a year.

Leave the lyrics box empty and the same 50 credits returns an instrumental. No commitment, no year of discipline, no words to defend.

Three patterns say take that route for now. Fewer than twenty ads a year means nobody hears a jingle enough for recognition to build.

Positioning that is still moving means a sung claim locks in words you may want to change next quarter.

And ads carrying a voice-over mean the sung line and the spoken line compete for the same attention. The listener follows neither.

One more test before you commit either way. Show the fifteen words to somebody outside the company and ask what the product does.

If they cannot answer, the lyrics are decoration. Decoration repeated twenty times is still decoration.

The track is generated for you rather than licensed from a catalogue. Confirm the usage terms that apply to your account before making one a permanent asset.

Keep the words, the description, the date and the file together. A question about a brand asset always arrives later than you expect.