UnderstandingJingles and Needledrop:

A Rhetorical Approach to Music

in Advert sing

LINDAM. SCOTT*

Studies of music in advertising have tended to characterize music as a nonseman-

tic, affective stimulus working independently of meaning or context. This implicit
theory is reflected in methodology and procedures that separate music from its
syntax of verbal and visual elements. Consequently, the consumer's abilityto judge
and interpret music as part of an overall rhetorical intention is overlooked. This
article proposes an alternative theory-that music is meaningful, language-like-
and calls for both interpretive and empirical research as ways of exploring a richer,
potentially more explanatory concept.

To the averageAmerican, music in advertisingis a The purpose of this article is to advance a new theo-
commonplace. Jingles, rock-star endorsements, retical frameworkfor the study of music in advertis-
and "needledrop" music are a trivial, easily under- ing. An approach to musical meaning will be pro-
stood part of the daily cultural discourse.' Children posed that draws on notions of culture, rhetoric, and
sing "Keep on, keep on, keep on moving with Twix" symbolic action, such as those espoused by Kenneth
in the school yard. Parentssmile, shaking their heads. Burkeand CliffordGeertz. In this view, ads use a vari-
A moon-headed piano player flies across television ety of symbolic forms to effect persuasion among cul-
skies crooning "Mack the Knife," and the audience turally constructed beings, exploiting every available
laughs, recognizing Ray [Link] yanks Madon- means, including music. Music becomes a functional
na's commercial to avoid offending the Catholic component that contributes to the rhetorical task in
church. The next morning, columnists raise their eye- ways as various as language. Eight illustrations of the
brows knowingly. Advertisingmusic is a shared expe- complexity of music's role in advertising will be
rience we can parrotand parody together. offered as evidence. Brought to the argument
In spite of the ease with which consumers interpret, throughout will be the work of music theorists such
remember, and play with advertisingmusic, scholars as Leonard Meyer, Victor Zuckerkandl, Susanne
who study advertising seem confounded by it. Few Langer,and Alan Merriam.A broad range of musical
studies of the role of music in advertising exist, de- disciplines will be represented-from psychology and
spite agreement that more work is needed. Those social psychology, as represented by Jay Dowling,
studies that have been done are riddled with incon- Dane Harwood, and Paul Farnsworth,to ethnomusi-
clusive findings. In most cases, this researchincorpo- cology, particularly as represented by Steven Feld,
rates little work from other fields toward understand- John Blacking, John Shepherd,and CharlesKeil.
ing the complexity of music as a cultural form. Conse- The approach proposed here also builds on recent
quently, the research is plagued by simplistic works in consumer behavior that argue for a culture-
presuppositions about "how music works." These as- based, or interpretive, approach to consumption
sumptions, which tend to characterize music as a (e.g., Hirschman 1989; McCracken 1988). In particu-
nonsemantic affective stimulus, form the basis of an lar, this article is intended in the spirit of Grant Mc-
implicit theory of music that is carriedthrough meth- Cracken's (1987) suggestion that ads be studied not
odology to procedure. as transparentenvelopes of product information, but

"'Needledrop"is an occupational term common to advertising

* Linda M. Scott is a doctoral candidate, Departmentof Adver- agenciesand the music [Link] refersto music that is prefabri-
tising, College of Communications,University of Texas at Austin, cated, multipurpose,and highly conventional. It is, in that sense,
Austin, TX 78712. The authorwishes to thank Steven Feld, David the musical equivalent of stock photos, clip art, or canned copy.
Mick, and threeanonymousreviewersfor their comments on previ- Needledropis an inexpensivesubstitutefor originalmusic;paid for
ous draftsof this article. on a one-time basis, it is droppedinto a commercialor film when a
particularnormativeeffect is desired.
223
? 1990 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc. * Vol. 17 * September 1990
All rights reserved.0093-5301/91/1702-0011$02.00

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224 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

as meaningful artifactsthat require the invocation of ing. For example, Gorn's (1982) experiment exposed
cultural frameworksto be understood. two groups of students, pretested for musical prefer-
The techniques used here are adapted from literary ences, to simple pictures of pens accompanied by
theory, specifically rhetorical theory and its contem- country or popular music and then presented a "pur-
porary cousin, reader-responsetheory. Although the chase opportunity." Results showed a relationship
frameworkproposed is more purely rhetorical than between music that was liked and purchasebehavior.
semiotic (Davis and Schliefer 1989), there is an un- Gorn concluded that his students were conditioned to
derlying philosophical premise that ads are conven- purchase the pen by the pairing with music. Kellaris
tional constructions of differentkinds of symbols that and Cox (1989) and Pitt and Abratt (1988) attempted
require a unifying syntax to have meaning. In this to replicate this experiment without success.
sense, the proposed approach is continuous with Gorn hypothesized that a positive affect mediated
structuralist work done by Mick (1986) and others between music and response. Other researchersalso
(e.g., Umiker-Sebeok 1987). However, because rhe- argue for an affect-mediated stimulus-response
torical theory is historically grounded, this approach model, although terminology may differ. For exam-
differs from a purely structuralist approach and ple, Mitchell (1988, p. 31) sought to show that the in-
shares philosophical overlap with historical ap- duction of "subjective feeling states" by ads affected
proaches proposed or practiced by Pollay and others attitude toward the ad and the brand and, thus, their
(Belk and Pollay 1985; Pollay 1979, 1987b). evaluation. His researchdesign conceived of music as
In an ad, as in any other speech act, syntax is impor- a tool that directly manipulated mood without cogni-
tant. The intersymbolic grammar of musical, visual, tive involvement. Mitchell's model carriesa different
and verbal elements is basic to its work. Thus, those name and is explained in more complex terms than
consumer behavior studies on music in or as a con- Gorn's, but it is substantially the same.
sumption experience, but not concerned with ads Haley et al. (1984, p. 12) drew a similar model of
(Holbrook 1986, 1988; Holbrook and Schindler nonverbal elements, including music: "In this model,
1989; Milliman 1986; Yalch 1988), are dealing with the effects of the advertisingare immediately incorpo-
an essentially different kind of musical communica- ratedinto overall affectiveattitudes towardthe adver-
tion. The discourse here is concerned with the re- tised product and leave little if any traces elsewhere."
search conducted on music in ads. Consumer behav- In short, theoretical grounding for research in this
ior researchon music and consumption will be used, area varies within a narrow range from affect-medi-
with work from other disciplines, to help illuminate ated classical conditioning to automatic mood ma-
the discussion of the reception of advertising music nipulation-all postulate affect-oriented,nonseman-
by consumers. The following review, however, is con- tic, automatic responses to musical stimuli.
fined to studies of music in advertising and seeks pri- Most researchers have substantiated their ap-
marily to illuminate the theoretical similarities that proaches with the work of Herbert Krugman and
have driven this work. Robert Zajonc; thus, it may be helpful to review as-
pects of that research. In the mid-1970s, Krugman
THE LITERATURE postulated that the right and left brain division al-
lowed the right brain to monitor nonverbal stimuli
Theory without cognitive engagement (1977, 1986). Thus,
Studies of advertising music share an underlying people could be persuaded by nonverbal elements in
theory in which music is an affective background advertisingwithout verbaltracesto recall. Krugman's
component that causes attachment to the product thesis was not that nonverbal elements were always
without the cognitive involvement of the viewer. Two processed by the right brain and, therefore, not re-
explicit processing models are represented:classical membered in verbal form. Rather, he arguedthat the
conditioning (Gorn 1982; Kellaris and Cox 1989; Pitt rightbrain'slonger attention span sometimes allowed
and Abratt 1988) and affective attachment or low in- it to monitor stimuli, calling in left-brain functions
volvement (Alpert and Alpert 1986; Haley, Richard- only as needed. The activities of the right and left
son, and Baldwin 1984; Mitchell 1988; Park and brain are now thought to be substantially integrated,
Young 1986; Stout and Rust 1986). Descriptive stud- particularlyin the processing of rich symbolic mate-
ies also assume a simple cause-and-effectmodel (Sew- rial such as found in ads. But research on nonverbal
all and Sarel 1986; Stewart and Furse 1986). Others elements in advertisingretains a trace of this thinking
not offering explicit processing theories express the in a tendency to assume that nonverbal elements are
belief that musical response is attributable to affect processed in an affective, unconscious, right-brained
(Simpkins and Smith 1974; Stout and Leckenby manner. Of course, the notion that nonverbal ele-
1988). ments never leave traces, verbal or otherwise, is falsi-
In its simplest terms, the effect of musical tones in fiable. The fact that I could cite three nonverbal com-
advertising is conceptualized as classical condition- mercials in the first paragraph of this article-and

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JINGLES AND NEEDLEDROP 225

that most readerswill recognize them and recall their to be responding to background music (liked or not)
musical elements-tends to disprove the notion that rather than to any meaning the music might have.
such stimuli are always processed unconsciously and, LeonardMeyer (1956, p. 5), who has contributed sub-
therefore, are not remembered. stantially to music research as both theorist and em-
Zajonc's thesis that affect can occur independently piricist, calls this the error of hedonism, "the confu-
of cognition (Zajonc 1980; Zajonc and Markus 1982) sion of aesthetic experience with the sensuously
is used to support researchdesigns that assume music pleasing," an approach that overlooks the communi-
is a stimulus that always works independently of cog- cative meaning that a musical piece may have. Ac-
nition (e.g., Park and Young 1986, p. 14). Zajonc cording to Meyer, hedonistic conceptions of music
(1980, p. 154) has repeatedly stressed that the usual are made manifest in the "testing of pleasure-displea-
case is for thought and affect to occur together: "In sure reactions to simple sound or elementary sound
nearly all cases, however, feeling is not free of complexes." Tests of bipolar musical coding based on
thought, nor is thought free of feeling." The further a sensualistic theory of music abound in advertising
equation of nonverbal elements with affective re- research. Yet even a small sample of musical ads
sponse is also counter to Zajonc's (1980, p. 165) argu- shows many ways in which music actually communi-
ments, which stress the emotional effects of "cogni- cates, as we shall see.
tive" stimuli and vice versa.
As a theoretical basis, some experimental research- Method and Methodology
ers have cited Cialdini (1984), whose theory of per-
suasion relies on highly structuredsocial situations of Studies of music in advertising have been con-
liking, such as Tupperwareparties and good cop/bad structed by a theory of music as an emotionally ma-
cop ploys. The interpretivejump from these interac- nipulative stimulus that appears as a sensual back-
tive group situations to music as an automatic route drop and operates without cognitive intervention to
to persuasion is a largeone. Further,Cialdini's advice achieve affective attachment. The tones themselves
to resist certain advertising appeals would be mean- are thought to work independently and affectively,
ingless if consumers were indeed powerlessto resist or without semantic content, almost like a mood-alter-
recognize emotional manipulation by musical tones. ing drug. Methodologically then, isolating the music
It is conventional in Western thought to believe from the message is unproblematic, since the effect
that musical effects can be equated with emotional of the music is presumed to occur independently of
ones (Dowling and Harwood 1986, p. 202; Farns- meaning or context. This in turn leads to research
worth 1958, p. 86; Merriam 1964, p. 266). However, procedures such as absence/presence coding, separa-
past inquiry has revealed difficulties in this concept. tion of musical modes or keys, and tests that present
First, even if musical effects were restricted to emo- an austere visual with semantically unrelated music.
tional appeals, we would soon find that music can These procedures exemplify what Meyer (1956, p. 5)
both affect and representthe emotions, not necessar- has called the error of atomism, "the attempt to ex-
ily simultaneously or in similar ways (Dowling and plain and understandmusic as a succession of separa-
Harwood 1986, pp. 202-203; Farnsworth 1958, pp. ble, discrete sounds and sound complexes."
86-95). This results in interpretive listening, which The theoretical assumptions about the nature of
intrinsically distances the hearerand lessens the plau- music that underpin the methodology of separatingit
sibility of automatic attachments caused by tone as syntactically lead to proceduresthat negate the com-
such (Meyer 1956, p. 11). Second, the assumption plex functionality of the music. Procedurally, the
that tonal forms automatically arouse moods and studies can be grouped into two categories. In the first
emotions is counter to experience and practice. As type, a laboratorysetting was used to test responsesto
Farnsworth (1958, p. 94) notes, "Psychiatrists and simulated ads with music (e.g., Gorn 1982; Kellaris
clinical psychologists would no doubt rejoice if all and Cox 1989; Mitchell 1988; Park and Young 1986;
they needed to cure the depressed or maniacal were Simpkins and Smith 1974). Responses usually in-
access to a variety of compositions whose 'moods' volved an artificially constructed buying behavior or
had previously been carefully catalogued. Therapy presumed antecedent, although one study used bipo-
under such circumstances could be administered in lar ratingsof emotional effects (Stout and Rust 1986).
truly engineering fashion-composition X for one Nearly all experiments used static visual stimuli
disturbance and Y for another." (cards or slides) with musical accompaniment, and
Music's functional role in an ad, according to this the visuals were denuded of significant verbal or vi-
positive affect theory, would be as pleasant back- sual appeal to isolate the effect of the music. In no
ground (Gorn 1982, p. 94; Park and Young 1986, pp. case using these artificial stimuli did the music have
11-12; Simpkins and Smith 1974, p. 362; Stout and a semantic relationship to the visual stimulus. Re-
Leckenby 1988, p. 207). Thus, the affective construct spondents were generally pretested to determine mu-

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226 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

ness") on the hypothesis that more favorable buying ate and communicative in particular message con-
behavior would be correlatedwith preferredmusic. In texts, exclusive of personal taste. Again, the assump-
some instances, liking was mediated by some bipolar tion reflectsa theory of music in which tones result in
descriptor, such as happy/sad. Some significant re- effects without interpretation, mediation, or judg-
sults were found, but most showed no differences, ment on the part of the listener.
correlated in unexpected ways, or conflicted inter- When correlations were not found or were contra-
nally (Mitchell 1988, pp. 140-14 1; Park and Young dictory in these studies, researcherssometimes con-
1986, p. 21; Stout and Rust 1986). cluded that the "compatible music" had no effect
In contrast to the laboratory experiments, other (Simpkins and Smith 1974) and sometimes sought to
studies tested largegroups of real ads in an attempt to refine their theory of processing (but not their theory
correlate the presence of music in the aggregateto a of music; Park and Young [1986]). A few suggested
similarly aggregated effect (Burke Marketing Re- that perhaps music requireda more complex concep-
search 1978; Haley et al. 1984; McCollum/Spielman tualization (Haley et al. 1984; Stout and Leckenby
and Company 1976; McEwen and Leavitt 1976; 1988). It is to this last need that this article is ad-
Ogilvy and Raphaelson 1982; Radio Recall Research dressed.
1981; Sewall and Sarel 1986; Stewartand Furse 1986;
Stout and Leckenby 1988). Spots were first coded for
"executional elements"; coding for music was usually MUSIC, MEMORY, AND CULTURE
absence/presence, but sometimes additional bipolar
codes (happy/sad, melody/no melody) were used. The recognition and comprehension of any form of
In each of these large-samplestudies, the spots were music-virtually the ability to perceive it as some-
tested for responses from groups of consumers; then thing other than noise-is now considered a learned
the aggregateelements and responses were studied for skill acquired through years of enculturation and ac-
correlations. The correlations were simple indepen- tivated through memory (Dowling and Harwood
dent/dependent variable constructs: that is, the rela- 1986, p. 4; Merriam 1964, p. 297; Meyer 1967, p. 7;
tionship of music to recall or to persuasion. None Zuckerkandl 1956, p. 64). Although invoked as intu-
considered the interdependence of the executional el- itively and seemingly unconsciously as grammar,lis-
ements themselves-the interaction of visual, verbal, tening ability is no less the product of social training
and musical elements.2 No significant correlation be- (Blacking 1973, 1981). Interpretingmusic, then, is a
tween music and response was found in any of this convention-based act, just like reading or looking at
research. pictures.
The situations and instruments used in these stud- It is clear from the work of schema theorists in the
ies-bipolar coding, emotional descriptors, isolation arts (Gombrich 1960; Iser 1978; Meyer 1956, 1967)
from meaningful context, undiscriminating aggrega- that understanding a complex message like an ad
tion-reflect the implicit theory. Further, the design would involve evoking several symbolic schemata-
of each study and the phrasing of conclusions were a huge regressionof past exposures to pictures, words,
generallybased on the convention that if correlations sounds, and ads-and the making and matching of
to response were found, they would suggest that the many hypotheses according to learned conventions.
absence or presence of music or a particular musical The simplest response to an ad thus requires the re-
form might be generalized in its effects. This is the trieval of a storehouse of cultural information, as well
third error of music research identified by Meyer as higherlevel manipulation of the present communi-
(1956, p. 5), the error of universalism, or "the belief cation (Dowling and Harwood 1986, p. 4). The con-
that the responses obtained by experiment or other- sumer's evaluation of the ad or the product necessar-
wise are universal, natural, and necessary" and thus ily follows a complex, highly symbolic enterprise re-
"good for all times and all places." In advertising re- quired to find the ad intelligible at all.
search,universalismunderpins conclusions that pref- Further, each encounter with a given symbolic
erences for a given mode, tone, or style will hold form results in its being recast by the present instance
across a variety of advertising exposures. Such an as- (Shepherd 1977, p. 19), because learning to interpret
sumption precludes consumers' ability to judge and cultural material is not a skill that is learned once,
understand various styles and melodies as appropri- like multiplication tables, but a continuing, lifelong
experience (Dowling and Harwood 1986, p. 4; Mer-
2McEwen and Leavitt did study the interaction of "elemental fac- riam 1964, p. 146). Importantly, enculturation takes
tors," but these were groups of elements that cut across what we place in the largercontext of styles and norms, which
normally consider executional elements, such as music and visuals. are "never static . . . on the contrary, dynamic and
For instance, music in this study was an absence/presence descrip-
tor grouped under a larger elemental factor called "pleasant liveli- ever-changing"(Merriam 1964, p. 162). Finally, both
ness," which included the presence of visual dissolves and the in- the exhibition of response behavior and the verbalex-
clusion of children or babies. planation of response are socially mediated (Meyer

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JINGLES AND NEEDLEDROP 227

1956; Nisbett and Wilson 1977). Clearly, the cultural ing it as a self-servingpiece of rhetoric (Festingerand
implications in studying the role of music in advertis Maccoby 1968). The conventions of commercial
ing are enormous. Yet one of the most arrestingweak- placements prepare us to invoke that frame as a de-
nesses of the studies discussed here is their universal fensive move (Allyn and Festinger 1961). So the
tendency to separate advertising from its social and viewer, far from being driven to submission by affect-
cultural context. producing nonverbal elements, is often holding back
from acceptance of the message, waiting for an excuse
to dismiss the communication as "just more advertis-
FRAMING THE SOCIAL CONTEXT ing hype." In this way, "knowledge and experience
OF ADVERTISING often color or modify our opinions about what is
heard" (Meyer 1956, p. 78). This kind of wary stance
If our concern is to understandmusic in communi- is not the sort of behavior that leads to classical condi-
cations, we must recognize the social characterof the tioning.
musical communication process. According to Feld Given the skepticism of the viewer, it is part of the
(1984, p. 6), "The listener is implicated as a socially work of the executional elements of advertising to
and historically situated being, not just as organs that help make the essential proposition more suasive.
receive and respond to stimuli. . . For this reason, The music in an ad may perform any number of rhe-
a description, and a theory of the musical encounter torical tasks: supporting arguments, demonstrating
must be sensitive to the biographies of the object/ claims, building a ground for mutual confidence,
events and actors in question. . . . In short, the musi- catching and holding attention, and providing a vehi-
cal object is never isolated, any more than are its lis- cle for repetition and remembrance. Music serves
teners or its producers." these functions only by virtue of shared cultural
The firststep in viewing music as a socially situated, meaning.
communicative experience is to recognize that musi- Importantto the functioning of music as rhetoric is
cal responses are not biologically imbedded but are the notion of style, the manner in which a message is
thoroughly learned. There are two important conse- communicated. Style in communications is no mere
quences to this. First, it means that communication frill but a necessary and omnipresent attribute of any
of meaning through music is based on systems of cul- symbolic vehicle (Burke 1973, pp. 126-129). No mes-
tural conventions and, thus, interpretations are not sage can be crafted without the appearance of style,
idiosyncratic but largely shared. Second, it means regardlessof the medium, and musical messages are
that each musical communication is framed by the no exception: "The meaning of a tone, however, lies
sum of the listener's past listening experience. The not in what it points to but in the pointing itself .
phrase "past experience" includes the immediate The meaning is not the thing indicated but the man-
temporal experience of the particular stimulus (i.e., ner of indicating" (Zuckerkandl 1956, p.68). Musical
the message syntax) as well as the more remote, yet styles are artificialconstructs developed by musicians
ever-present,past experience of similar musical stim- at specific times within specific cultures (Meyer 1956,
uli and similar musical situations in other works, in- p. 60). Their meaning-and intended effects-must
cluding other ads (Meyer 1956, p. 36). Thus, each ad- therefore be understood historically. Responses to
vertising experience is framed by all those that pre- musical styles depend not on natural, universal re-
ceded it. sponses or on learned denotative meanings but on
We approach an ad as we approach a novel, sym- habits of listening, acquired and adapted through on-
phony, or sculpture-by framing it with a set of ex- going enculturation (Meyer 1956, p. 61). Music is in
pectations (Feld 1984; Gombrich 1960; Meyer 1956, no way a universal language but is shaped by the cul-
p. 73; Iser 1978). Our expectations are based on the ture of which it is a part;in the texts it uses, it commu-
axioms of the culture, mediated by our own experi- nicates direct information to those who understand
ences, whether individual or shared. We learn the language and style in which it is couched (Mer-
through our enculturation to approach ads with prej- riam 1964, p. 223; Meyer 1967, p. 7).
udice, fascination, and skepticism. The lack of recog- By using certain visual, verbal, and musical styles,
nition of this framing step causes considerable bias an advertisermakes a meaningful choice from among
in advertisingresearch,which formulates an audience a variety of possibilities. The viewer interpretsthe sty-
searching for product information, compliantly listic choices as a sign indicative of the character or
forming positive brandattitudes, and resolving inten- intent of the communicator (Aristotle 1954, pp. 164-
tions to purchase. A more accurate formulation 218; Burke 1969, pp. 49-64; Feld 1984, p. 2). Thus
might be television viewers who roll their eyes, sigh, the style itself has meaning. Since the musical sign in
and go for a snack when the commercials come on. an ad is understood by the hearerto be purposive, we
Ads are inherently self-interested messages. Know- must interpret it by addressingfunction. Because the
ing that, a viewer comes to any commercial by fram- same sign may serve very different functions or may

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228 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

be replaced by a synonymous sign, meaning can be nearly as intriguing, as, "It was the best of times; it
attributedonly in the context of use (Hirsch 1976, pp. was the worst of times." Although equally grammati-
23-26). Therefore,we must look for musical meaning cal, the sentences are likely to be evaluated differ-
in the historical and social context of performance, ently. In examples of advertising, generalizations are
purpose, and function-it is from this vantage point often based on tests of static pictures systematically
that music attains a rhetorical eloquence that can stripped of verbal or visual appeal and accompanied
challengelanguage(Blacking 1981, p. 186). by unrelated music. Such generalizations are clearly
founded on a "see John run" test. The leap from plain
MUSIC AS A FUNCTIONAL ELEMENT photographs accompanied by Benny Goodman to
IN ADVERTISING Robert Palmer and his postmodern Rockettes' mes-
sage that Pepsi is "simply irresistible" is one that re-
Music in advertisingis part of"an interdependence quires more than faith. It demands an absence of criti-
of elements which is complex, intermediate, and re- cal judgment. Ads, like sentences, symphonies, and
ciprocal, as againstthe simple, direct, and irreversible sculptures, vary in quality and impact. Tests that do
dependence implied in classical causality" (S. F. Na- not recognize this overlook the consumer's ability to
del, quoted in Merriam 1964, p. 215). It is active, discriminate among commercials.
playing a part, and making a contribution to the total Just as grammar allows us to generate and under-
task. As such, music should not be isolated from the stand an infinite number of sentences and cultural
complex interrelationship of verbal and visual sym- conventions allow us to interpret poetry, newspaper
bols that always accompany it in a specific message. reports, and VCR instructions, we interpret advertis-
Music never appearsin an advertisingcontext with- ing in a given context, using shared cultural experi-
out at least one other executional element: the an- ence. Through convention and grammar,advertising
nouncer voice-over, the words in a jingle, or the pho- music can function with at least as much variability
tographyin a television commercial. These elements as language: it can be informative or affective, it can
vary in their relationship to the music, depending on denote or connote. Music can structure time, simu-
the function the music has in the particularcommer- late motion, and support repetition. The demonstra-
cial. The meaning of the music is determined by this tions that follow are intended to illustrate, and thus
relationship and does not inhere in the tones per se. act as evidence for, the proposition that music per-
Just as words in a language become meaningful by forms a variety of functions in its contribution to the
virtue of being joined in a system of relationships overall rhetorical task of advertising. Several com-
called a grammar,the elements in a commercial are mercials will be describedin sufficientdetail for read-
made meaningfulby their relationshipsto each other. ers to either recall or imagine them. If a readerwishes
According to Langer (1942, p. 67), "Grammatical to obtain video copies of the commercials, the names,
structure,then, is a furthersource of significance. We dates, and agencies, as well as the Radio TV Reports
cannot call it a symbol, since it is not even a term; identification numbers, have been provided in Table
but it has a symbolific mission. It ties together several 1. In each commercial, music will be shown to be
symbols, each with at least a fragmentary connota- playing a different role, to contribute to persuasion,
tion of its own, to make one complex term, whose and to [Link] we will see that the
meaning is a special constellation of all the connota- traditional research constructs would have obscured
tions involved. What the special constellation is, de- the rhetoricalwork of the music.
pends on the syntactical relations within the complex
symbol, or proposition." So the combination of non- Dissonance/Consonance: Bayer Aspirin
verbal elements in an ad comes to have meaning via A recent commercial for Bayer aspirin opens
a peculiar sort of grammarthat can employ all these abruptlywith a shot of a man in pain and the sound of
symbols simultaneously: words, voice, music, color, dissonant music. Within seconds, a billboard flashesa
shape, and motion. And it can do so in as many vari- black-and-white message: "Pain." Then we see a se-
ous waysas a grammarin languagecan construct sen- ries of flashes of various people rubbing their bodies
tences from individual words. Just as the representa- in gestures of discomfort, accompanied by heighten-
tion and impact of different parts of speech will vary ing aural dissonance. After a few of these pictures, we
from sentence to sentence, the salience and impact of are shown a quick image of a Bayer aspirin bottle. In-
music (or pictures)will vary from ad to ad. Thus, the termittently, with the continued images, the product
expectation that the relationship between music and pitch starts. As the announcer builds his case, the dis-
consumer responsewill be consistent is not realistic. sonant music almost imperceptibly becomes conso-
In language, two sentences may be equally gram- nant. The people now are smiling, relieved. Bayer as-
matical and comprehensiblebut not be equally inter- pirin has done its work.
esting, pleasing, seductive, or persuasive. For exam- This commercial is playing on the widely under-
ple, "See John run" is just as grammatical, but not stood meaning for consonance and dissonance: "It is

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JINGLES AND NEEDLEDROP 229

TABLE 1
MUSIC IN COMMERCIALS:EIGHTDEMONSTRATIONS

Identification
Product Year Commercial name Advertising agency number

Bayer aspirin 1989 "Pain" Lintas, New York 89-05043

Honda LX 1988 "Rough Idea" Rubin Postaer, Los Angeles 88-11365
Diet Coke 1982 "Premiere" Lintas, New York 82-15634
Alleract 1989 "Sneak Attack" McCaffery & McCall, New York 89-04832
Matchlightcharcoal 1988 "The Moment of Truth" DDB-Needham, Chicago 88-05569
Californiaraisins 1982 "Rondo" Foote, Cone & Belding, San Francisco 82-20260
Levi's 501 jeans 1984 "Bluesman" Foote, Cone & Belding, San Francisco 84-16011
Pepsi 1989 "Robert Palmer" BBDO, New York 89-02229

NOTE.-The identification number is from Radio TV Reports.

evident, no matter what theory we adopt, that conso- 106). A similar construct is used in the Bayer com-
nance representsthe element of normalcy and repose, mercial; the resolution of the dissonance into conso-
[dissonance] the no less important element of irregu- nance parallels the structure of a problem and solu-
larity and disturbance" (Meyer 1956, p. 231). It tion within the ad.
would be natural to assume that our response to this So, by invoking both our past experiences with dis-
grating sound is instinctive, working on pain-avoid- sonance and consonance and our schema for prob-
ance principle. What is actually happening here is not lem/solution advertising, we are easily able to inter-
instinctive, however, but a learned response to a cul- pret the intended meaning: Bayer aspirin makes pain
turally construed notion of noise. Although all cul- go away. The music in this spot has accomplished two
tures have some concept of dissonance (Meyer 1956, tasks. It has reproduced the affect of discomfort and
p. 229), the particularnotion of what sounds actually the peace of repose, while demonstrating product
are dissonant varies from culture to culture, indicat- benefit with a higher-levelcognitive operation of met-
ing that recognition of dissonance is culturally deter- aphor. Thus, it has functioned efficiently as a rhetori-
mined, socially mediated, and learned (Dowling and cal device.
Harwood 1986). "For consonance and dissonance are Note that the kind of bipolar, "liked-disliked"mu-
not primarily acoustical phenomena, rather they are sic construct of many research strategieswould have
human mental phenomena and as such they depend obscured this meaning. Certainly no one would re-
for their definition upon the psychological laws gov- port liking the music. Yet its use is persuasive.
erning human perception, upon the context in which
the perception arises, and upon the learned response Representing Motion: Honda LX
patterns which are part of this context" (Meyer 1956,
p. 229). Thus, what we might interpretas a phenome- A Honda LX spot opens with a familiar situation:
non occurring in nature is, in fact, a metaphor. Yet a driver wants to pass a slow "eighteen-wheeler"on a
it is in this apparent naturalness that the artifice of narrowcountry road. An opportunity opens up when
metaphor finds its strongest power: the metaphorical a side road appears. The driver takes it, but must
is felt to be naturallyreal, obvious, and complete. "floor it" to be sure she actually does pass the truck.
Even the naturalnessof this metaphor needs inter- As the race goes on, we hear sprightly music, clearly
preting within the frameworkof the commercial. We designating the movement of the little Honda as it
do not merely cover our ears in reaction but under- presses to pass the truck.
stand quickly, on the basis of our past experiences In this spot, the music is working to describe the
with advertising, that this dissonance is part of an speediness of the car while heightening the tension of
effort to tell us something. To understand what that the narrative, helping to hold our attention. Music's
something is, we must attend to other parts of the ability to represent motion is widely recognized and
message: "No particularconnotation is an inevitable a time-honored use (Zuckerkandl 1956, pp. 79-95).
product of a given musical organization, since the as- However, it is important to note also the substitut-
sociation of a specific musical organization with a ability of this particularpiece in representingthe mo-
particular referential experience depends upon the tion of the car. Any number of other sprightly repre-
beliefs and attitudes of the culture toward the experi- sentations of motion in musical form would have
ence" (Meyer 1956, p. 262). Dissonance is often used worked for this task. (From this phenomenon comes
in music as a foil against which consonance can be the whole industry of"needledrop" music.) Note also
"more gloriously" present (Zuckerkandl 1956, p. that this particularmelody, in another context, could

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230 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

take on many other meanings: a hostess frantically it pleasurablewhen other forms would be gratingand
making last-minute adjustments to the buffet table, nonsensical (Zuckerkandl 1956, pp. 213-214). Fur-
children scrambling up a tree, a young man unload- ther, rhythmic repetition in music creates a growing
ing groceries from a car, and so on. It is this principle sense of accomplishment. In rhetoric, this sense of ac-
of synonymity that is at the basis of cultural interpre- complishment is called "formal assent." Burke
tation, as distinguished from lexically oriented sys- (1969, pp. 58-59) explains, "We know that many
tems of meaning (see Hirsch 1976, pp. 50-73). Since purely formal patternscan readily awakenan attitude
this piece is potentially synonymous with other musi- of collaborative expectancy in us. For instance, imag-
cal notations, we interpret it with the aid of the related ine a passage built about a set of oppositions ('we do
visual. The meaning of the music would be lost if sep- this, but they on the other hand do that; we stay here,
arated grammatically from its visual term. but they go there, we look up, but they look down,'
etc.). Once you grasp the trend of the form, it invites
participation . . . by the time you arrive at the second
Rhythm and Repetition: Diet Coke of its three stages, you feel how it is destined to de-
The Diet Coke jingle is well known. The introduc- velop-and on the level of purely formal assent you
tory spot employed a staged Radio City premiere with would collaborateto round out its symmetryby spon-
a cast of hundreds of celebrities. The Rockettes dance taneously willing its completion and perfection as an
around a gargantuan Diet Coke while waiters serve utterance." Thus, through its unrelentingly rhyth-
samples on silver trays. There is no auditory message mic, ascending, and repetitive pattern, particularlyin
except the jingle. The lyrics themselves are the kind a visual matrix of social approval, the music in the
of advertising message that has meaning only for a Diet Coke commercial is doing the lion's share of the
brand manager. rhetorical work through the mechanism of formal as-
sent.
IntroducingDiet Coke!
You're gonna love it just for the taste of it.
IntroducingDiet Coke! Music as Narrative: Alleract
You're gonna love it just for the taste of it.
You're gonna taste with just one calorie. A recent Alleract commercial operateson that well-
IntroducingDiet Coke! known cultural form, the narrative, using conven-
IntroducingDiet Coke! tional denotations of musical instruments (see Mer-
This is the one that can carrythe fame riam 1964, p. 237). An allergy sufferersits on a park
Of the number one soft drink, bench. Strings are plucked suspensefully as, behind
The number one name. him, animated trees and plants-presumably carry-
The real cola taste that you wanted is here. ing allergenic pollens-creep up to the bench. He be-
Now and forever, gins to sniffle and sneeze. A snare drum signals the
We'regoing one better. climax. Then the sound of trumpets declares the res-
IntroducingDiet Coke! cue as the product is introduced as the hero. Finally,
You're gonna drink it just for the taste of it.
Just for the taste of it, the narrativeis briefly reprisedboth visually and mu-
Diet Coke! sically. While the product pitch in this commercial is
being given by the announcer voice-over, a simulta-
What is persuasive in this commercial is not the self- neous narrative is being carried by the musical ac-
congratulatory verbals. What is persuasive is the companiment and visuals. Notice that relegatingthis
crowd of celebrities and the rhythmic movement of music to mere "pleasant background music without
the repeated rising tones in the jingle. a melody" would completely obscureits functionality
Rhythm, like consonance and dissonance, is cul- in narratingthe rescue of the hay-feversuffererby the
turally determined: "We must not forget that what we product.
call rhythm in music is a comparatively new thing, Childhood experiences with pieces such as "Peter
unknown to antiquity and the Middle Ages" (Zucker- and the Wolf" are the basis for our ability to interpret
kandl 1956, pp. 76-77). But the definite intent in the music narratively. Holbrook (1986, 1988) has re-
wavelike pattern in a rhythmic motion like this is one counted personal experiences that demonstrate the
of the most forceful in modern Western culture. cultural and individual forces that shape our concepts
Rhythmic motion and patterned tones are tradition- of artifactual meaning. In particular, he tells of his
ally used in situations to elicit group solidarity in ac- fear on first hearing "Peter and the Wolf." These sin-
tion (Zuckerkandl 1956, pp. 173-174). gular fears, related to his own injuries and develop-
In this particular instance, the music is also helping ment, were embroidered on the cultural meaning of
to carry the ridiculous repetitiveness in the words- the piece as a fearsome narrative (1988). In this way,
an important task in advertising, where repetition is interpretationsof cultural artifactscome to have indi-
key. Music not only supports repetition but can make vidualized meanings while resting on a large base of

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JINGLES AND NEEDLEDROP 231

shared significance. The challenge of musical com- passingly familiar with classical music to know that
munications research,then, would be to find that area this is a soft send-up of so-called serious music. Its
in which interpretationconverges and is no longer id- flouting of convention is both musical and culinary.
iosyncratic but shared. Therefore, we can see that a coding system designed
to correlate preferencesfor "classical" versus "popu-
"Locating": Matchlight Charcoal lar" music would entirely miss the point.
The current Matchlight charcoal campaign dra- Forging Identifications: Levi's "Bluesman"
matizes ease of use via sports metaphors. In one ad, a
man wearingjeans and a baseball cap emerges from The Levi's 501 campaign that began in 1984 play-
his basement and walks toward the barbeque pit. We fully centers around the color and word "blue."
hearthe familiar organ music of the ballpark,increas- There are blue jeans, blue film, and the blues-in one
ing the tension through dramatic chords. The man's ad, a young man even paints his sneakers blue. In an
family looks on with apprehension; his wife offers early spot, a Clio winner, the lighthearted interludes
him lighter fluid. The man "pitches" a lighted match of urban youth are paradoxically interspersed with
into the pit, and it lands on a bag of Matchlight char- the image of a black man sitting in a window and
coal. As the flames catch, the family looks happy and quietly playing the blues. He is clearly the singer of
dinner begins; the organ music changes to that dis- the music, but his image seems incongruous with the
tinctive scrambleof triumphantchords that one hears others. He is older, immobile, boxed in. He is recog-
at the ballparkwhen a home run or other celebrative nizable as the archetypal rural bluesman (Keil 1966,
event occurs. pp. 34-36)-hence, the title of the spot.
The music here operates through the interpretive We could interpret this as a casual use of popular
move that Feld (1984) describes as "locating." In this music. This campaign capitalized on the crossover of
case, the location is a specific kind of experience, black artists into the mainstream pop audience in the
American baseball games, that the viewer must have mid-1980s (Perry 1988, pp. 51-54) and the rise of the
to interpret the commercial. Thus, the message is in- blues in popularity among white audiences (Keil
tentionally audience-selective. The appeal, however, 1966, p. 79). But I suggest that this spot is a dialogic
is not based on musical taste but on what the music representation of the phenomenon of play and sub-
signifiesabout a lived experience. Retrieval of that ex- cultural forms found between urban white youth (es-
perience is necessary to understanding the meaning pecially workingclass) and black culture. The conflict
on all levels: visual, verbal, and musical. The music, between urban youth's exclusion from mature roles
then, is part of a complex syntax that argues through and their exposure to an ethic of material success of-
sports metaphors, and it must be understood on a ten results in a hedonistic approach to life and an
cognitive level. Although the intended viewer may adoption of other cultural forms that articulate alien-
have-and probably does have-a positive associa- ation (Shepherd 1985). In particular,the adoption of
tion and affecttowardthe commercial, to say that this blues and other black musical forms by white work-
spot works through affective response and automatic ing-class youth has been observed. Thus, the playful-
attachment would be reductive in the extreme. ness and the bluesman represent a dialogic approach
to identifying with alienation. Meaning is being
StructuringTime: California Raisins played out through a multivoiced discourse-the
voice of urbanyouth, the voice of the bluesman-rep-
In a 1983 Clio-winning commercial, Mozart's resented within a fictive construct (Bakhtin 1981).
"Rondo alla Turca"provides a dizzying dive through This spot speaks through an identification between
30 seconds of unconventional recipes using Califor- classes, as opposed to insinuating a direct identifica-
nia raisins. A feminine voice sings about the recipes tion between advertiser and consumer. The most
so quickly that the words are nearly unintelligible. A clearly marked carrierof the identification is the mu-
legion of dishes sails by. The raisins fall on them in sic. As Burke (1969, pp. 19-27) explains, the need for
slow motion, opposing the speed of the music. Once communication exists only in our division from each
the spot begins, most viewers are held to the end and other; we communicate through simple and some-
perceive the experience as shorter than 30 seconds. times small areas of consubstantiation-a taste for
This spot demonstratesmusic's well-known ability the blues, for example-and in so doing forge identi-
to structure time, creating a time sequence that is fications. As Burke (1973), Bakhtin (1981), and Iser
different, bracketed from the normal, perceived flow (1978) have made clear, even fictive constructs-
of events (Dowling and Harwood 1986, pp. 182-184). novels, poems, proverbs-are interestedcommunica-
In a rhetorical sense, the music in the raisins commer- tions, and rhetoricalintent is active even in the fictive
cial interrupts the surrounding commercial flow by representationhere. Thus, this interplay between ur-
creatinga virtual "time-space."And one need be only ban youth and ruralbluesman insinuates the interests

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232 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

of the advertiserthrough the device of an identifying background and who are acquainted with the modes
metonymy-blues and blue jeans.3 of association established within the style. However,
this variation, though significant, is often not as wide
Musical Ethos: Pepsi as it seems at first glance. . . In other words, while
it is true that on one level (that of specific meaning)
In one of the Pepsi rock-star endorsements, a col- the ideas entertained by various listeners are patently
lage of product shots and fountains is interspersed different, on another level (the level of symbolic and
with Robert Palmerand a fashionablydressed, poker- metaphorical meaning) the concepts entertained by
faced contingent of young women, who are at once the various listeners are very similar."
reminiscent of beauty-pageantcontestants, the Rock- Pepsi commercials continually update the signifiers
ettes, and Esther Williams movies. Palmer is singing and, thus, the appeal to a youthful audience. Older
a version of his hit song "Simply Irresistible"; the viewers may not interpret the music in exactly the
commercial visually mimics the video. Thus, the same way as the intended audience or be affected by
commercial refers to a product, a song, a video-as it in a similar way. But this does not mean they do not
well as to Miss America, Radio City extravaganzas, understand it. On the contrary, they understand that
and water ballet. By referring to so many cultural the intended purpose is to appeal to other groups.
texts, this spot exemplifies what is called "intertextu- Notice that it is through the changes of style (not
ality." As a typically postmodern artifact, the mean- only of music but of clothing and other signifiers)that
ing of this ad is in the free play between all these tex- the Pepsi Generation continues to be young in spite
tual references. Inferring the meaning is a complex, of its advancing years as an ethos. The adoption of
impressionistic, and highly creative enterprisefor the a particular style of delivery as a means of building
viewer. mutual confidence between speaker and listener is a
The increasing economic interdependence among device that rhetoricians have recognized since classi-
rock stars, record companies, music television, and cal times (Corbett 1965, pp. 26-27). The rhetorical
advertisingagencies draws the meanings of products, effectiveness of a given style, however, depends on
records, stars, and videos ever closer together (Frith how it is interpretedin a particularculture at a partic-
1988). It becomes difficult to sort out a separate ular historical moment. Thus, any model ascribing a
meaning from these interrelated texts. In this case, certain style of music as most effective with this age
the lyrics ("anything but typical . . . simply irresist- group would fail to be predictive because it lacks dy-
ible") are fortuitous for the product. But, for the in- namics. Such a model would be potentially falsified
tended audience, the song is not necessarily referen- with every new Top 40 list. This is but one example of
tial-as a typical jingle would be. What the song, the the need to ground musical tests in a sense of cultural
star, and the women are doing is pointing to an ethos, temporality-that is, in history. A disco style that
which in rhetorical terminology means the fictively might have been appropriate to the Pepsi ethos in
constructed implied speaker. It is neither the actual 1978 would have seemed hopelessly dated and unap-
speaker(Pepsico) nor the visualized character (Rob- pealing to young audiences in 1988. The blues of the
ert Palmer) but an entity somewhere in between. An rural black man once had particular meaning for a
ethos is constituted through sketchy referencescalled specific subculture; this style has now, according to
deictics, cues that must be assembled to see a clear some critics, lost its subcultural edge and been co-
personality(see Culler 1975, pp. 164-166). Here, the opted by the dominant culture in the form of the
ethos is the Pepsi Generation, a 25-year-old fictive white record industry-and the advertising industry
construct that has been carefully maintained by up- (Perry 1988). Holbrook (1986) has chronicled his
dating the deixis-the system of visual and musical own travailsin maintaining a taste forjazz againstthe
cues-periodically. This allows an appeal to a tar- vagariesof popular trends. The historicity of musical
geted audience familiar with both the music and the tastes in general has recently been demonstrated by
visual language. Other viewers may or may not be Holbrook and Schindler (1989). Thus, studies that at-
pleased by the presentation, but they will know to tempt to identify ideal relationshipsbased on musical
whom the message is directed. Here we address the preferencessufferfrom the failureto recognize the dy-
fact that musical signs may have varied effects on namics of style.
viewers, even from the same culture. According to
Merriam (1964, p. 271), "Connotations will vary
even among those who do have the same cultural RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
FUTURE RESEARCH
3A metonymyis a rhetoricalfigurebased on adjacencyor conti-
guity. That is, the relationshipis possible merely because the two
objects happento [Link], metonymy often drawsas- First and above all, an explanation must do justice to
sociations in which the relationshipsare accidentalor trivial. the thing that is to be explained, must not devaluate it,

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JINGLES AND NEEDLEDROP 233

interpret it away, belittle it, or garble it, in order to conventionally-framedconstruals of persuasivecom-

make it easier to [Link] question is not "At munication have placed upon our insight."
what view of the phenomenon must we arrive in order To accommodate such notions as style and locat-
to explain it in accordancewith one or anotherphiloso- ing, we would need to formulate interpretiveconcepts
phy?" but precisely the reverse: "What philosophy is with a historical base of advertising samples. This
requisiteif we are to live up to the subject, be on a level
with it?" The question is not how the phenomenon would require some things that are still in short sup-
must be turned, twisted, narrowed,crippled so as to be ply in the discipline-archives and histories (Pollay
explicable, at all costs, upon principles that we have 1979). Although several institutions now have adver-
once and for all resolved not to go beyond. The ques- tising archives, we are a long way from having a
tion is: "To what point must we enlarge our thought shared, easily accessible record of texts, such as those
so that it shall be in proportion to the phenomenon." in literature or the other arts. This situation is exem-
[FriedrichWilhelm Joseph von Schelling, epigraph in plified by the need to describeand suggestavenues for
Zuckerkandl( 1956)] procuringthe commercials interpreted in this paper.
Yet these difficultiesshould not overridethe develop-
I have illustrated here the complexity of music as a ment of a historical sense of advertising forms; nei-
cultural form and the range of roles it can play as a ther marketing nor consumer culture are ahistorical
rhetorical element in an ad. The foregoing arguments constructs (Sherry 1990).
thus constitute an alternative theory of music as a ba- Because rhetorical theory tends to ground analysis
sis for advertising research, one in which music is in history and culture, it would become more evident
meaningful and language-like rather than affective that advertising, as an institution, is a speaker in po-
and nonsemantic. This theory of music is greatly ex- litical as well as economic discourses. As Pollay
panded in terms of complexity and in terms of poten- (1986, 1987a) and Rogers (1987) have suggested,crit-
tial explanatory power as well. It illustrates the prom- ical approachesto consumption and ads could be ap-
ise of the interpretive, or humanistic, paradigm that propriately added to the domain of consumer re-
has recently been under discussion in consumer re- search. Rogers has suggested the broadening of
search (Hirschman 1989; Lutz 1989). I do not, how- method and scope, the triangulation of qualitative
ever, wish to suggest that the proposed theory should and quantitative, to achieve this end. The power im-
not be subject to empirical investigation (see Calder plications of ads are significant. Developing ideolo-
and Tybout 1989); I am offering it as an alternative gies of consumption, chemical use, race, class, gender
theory to be negotiated and investigated empirically relations, and even warfareare evident in ads across
(Deshpande 1983). A careful review of the sources time. The Levi's 501 jeans commercial discussed here
used to construct the argument for this theory would is just one that suggests even music can be adapted to
show that it is already based on a combination of in- ideology in advertising.
terpretive and empirical sources. However, adopting Taking advantageof the richness and theory-gener-
such a concept would necessarily lead to a different ating ability of interpretive approachesdoes not pre-
methodology and, therefore, alternative procedures clude such things as quantification and does not rele-
for research. gate research to the idiosyncratic (Christians and
The most obvious difference is in the use of inter- Carey 1980). A major premise of this article is that
pretive skills and language to de-velop a more sensitive musical meanings in ads are culturally based and,
grasp of the ways that consumers may interpret music thus, socially defined and shared. So, although indi-
in an ad. My hope is that this article might stimulate vidual interpretation does occur, that understood
a discourse in which scholars share, negotiate, and re- area where the meaning can be seen as generally ac-
fine knowledge about musical rhetoric in the way that ceptable can serve as an anchor for research (Culler
scholars in the humanities do (Hirschman 1986). 1975; Hirsch 1976). Measurement of acceptable in-
Since advertising borrows from the arts in both form terpretations can then occur conceptually as the col-
and content, it seems worthwhile to look at those dis- lective overlap of many individual interpretations
ciplines for a better understanding of how artifactual rather than as a one-to-one matching with the inter-
meaning is constituted by both makers and users. pretations of the [Link] example, given the
Some researchers have already begun to analyze lan- Alleract commercial describedpreviously, how many
guage and visuals in ads through literary criticism or allergy suffererswould describe it by telling a similar
semiotics (Stern 1989); it seems reasonable to argue story?How similar would they be to each other?
that doing the same with music would be fruitful. As Hirsch (1976) and Culler (1975) have suggested
Sherry (1990, p. 43) has argued in his analysis of the that recognition of synonymity is a way of observing
postmodern potential for consumer research, this shared interpretations empirically. Substituting mu-
would require honing interpretive skills in a way that sic of various tempos in the Honda ad and seeing how
has not been traditional in consumer research, yet it people recognize the semantic difference might be
could reveal the "virtually unrecognized limits our one way of doing this and would not require complex

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234 JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH

articulation on the part of respondents. Successful Working Paper 85/86-5-4, Marketing Department,
precedent exists for using synonymity recognition as University of Texas at Austin, 78712.
a basis for measuringmusical meaning (Dowling and Aristotle (1954), The Rhetoric and the Poetics ofAristotle,
Harwood 1986, pp. 210-211). trans. W. Rhys Roberts and Ingram Bywater, New
Several interpretive writers mentioned here, in- York: Modern Library.
cluding Geertz, Burke, and Blacking, have called for Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1981), TheDialogic Imagination, ed.
Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael
a statistical analysis of symbolic or musical meanings Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press.
in other contexts, on the basis of confluence of mean- Belk, Russell W. and RichardW. Pollay (1985), "Imagesof
ing or function, not form. This would result in an eth- Ourselves:The Good Life in TwentiethCenturyAdver-
nography of symbols (Geertz 1983) or a statistics of tising," Journal of Consumer Research, 11 (March),
the symbolic (Burke 1973). This kind of study might 887-897.
ask questions about how often ads use music to desig- Blacking,John (1973), How Musical Is Man? Seattle: Uni-
nate motion or to locate the viewer in the past and versity of WashingtonPress.
about how people interpret these cues and with what (1981), "The Problem of 'Ethnic' Perceptionsin the
degree of convergence. Semiotics of Music," in The Sign in Music and Litera-
By designing studies and instruments that look for ture, ed. Wendy Steiner, Austin: University of Texas
convergence, synonymity, and confluences of mean- Press, 184-194.
ing, we might be able to quantify comprehension and Burke, Kenneth (1969), A Rhetoric of Motives, Berkeley:
response to music in ads with greater success than is University of CaliforniaPress.
now being achieved. In sum, we do not have to view (1973), The Philosophy of LiteraryForm, Berkeley:
University of CaliforniaPress.
the development of an interpretive theory and the Burke Marketing Research (1978), The Effect of Environ-
empirical exploration of that theory as mutually ex- mental and Executional Variableson OverallMemora-
clusive enterprises. Instead, each can enlighten the bility, Cincinnati:BurkeMarketingResearch.
other in the form of a triangulation (Deshpande 1983; Calder, Bobby J. and Alice M. Tybout (1989), "Interpre-
Sherry 1990). Several of the writers cited in this arti- tive, Qualitative, and Traditional Scientific Empirical
cle-Hirsch, Culler, Burke, and Iser-are literary Consumer Behavior Research," in Interpretive Con-
critics. In textual criticism, the infusion of empirical sumer Research, ed. Elizabeth C. Hirschman, Provo,
data into theory building has recently been a vibrant UT: Association for Consumer Research, 199-208.
source of learning, particularlyin the area of reader- Christians, Clifford G. and James W. Carey (1980), "The
response theory and new historical criticism. What Logic and Aims of Qualitative Research,"in Research
constitutes empirical research often differs from the Methods in Mass Communication, Englewood Cliffs,
experimentaldesigns analyzed here, and the methods NJ: Prentice-Hall.
I have proposed differ too, but the effort should be Cialdini, Robert B. (1984), Influence,New York: Morrow.
made to ground theory in experience. One of the sig- Corbett, Edward(1965), Classical Rhetoricfor the Modern
Student, London: Oxford University Press.
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here is that the theory of music being used is not con- Cornell University Press.
sistent with the way we experience the phenomenon Davis, RobertCon and Ronald Schliefer(1989), Contempo-
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servationand quantification but in avoiding ahistori- New York: Longman.
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methods drive our theories but must instead, in the and Method in Research in Marketing," Journal of
spirit of the Schelling quotation, design our methods Marketing,47 (Fall), 101 - 110.
in a way that can encompass whatever theory seems Dowling, W. Jay and Dane L. Harwood (1986), Music Cog-
articulateenough to fully describe the phenomenon. nition, New York: Academic Press.
In this way, the full potential of a pluralistic perspec- Farnsworth,Paul R. (1958), The Social Psychology of Mu-
tive can be achieved in the study of music, and in sic, New York: Holt, Rinehart& Winston.
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