For the past few months, during many of my waking hours, I’ve had two commercial jingles running through my head: Five Dollar Footlong and freecreditreport.com.
Both songs exemplify the “utterly obvious” style of raising brand awareness. The first is about a sandwich, roughly twelve inches in length, that is sold for five dollars. The second touts a web site that you can find by typing “freecreditreport.com” into your web browser.
Both products have grown more appealing during the recession: Five Dollar Footlongs as an economical way to avoid starvation (and put America back to work); freecreditreport.com as a way for credit-dependent consumers (and who isn’t?) to make sure they’re fully briefed on what’s in their permanent record.
Except that, despite its name, freecreditreport.com isn’t really free. The free credit report is a lure to get consumers to sign up for other services, with varying degrees of aforethought.
The only truly free credit reporting service authorized by the Federal Trade Commission is annualcreditreport.com. While the three credit bureaus may offer you additional services, the pitch is clear and the opt-out is easy.
Now the FTC is launching its own jingles to compete with freecreditreport.com. As you might have guessed, the jingles use the address “annualcreditreport.com”. And, as you also might have guessed, they’re nowhere near as catchy.
The FTC commercials are a total, 100% knockoff of the earlier spots, including one in which a singer works in a restaurant and another in which the singer is standing in his tiny apartment with his girlfriend/fiancé/joint-credit-history partner in the background.
But the songs lack both the pace and the lyricism of the originals. As Consumerist puts it, “they have kind of a squaresville, PBS vibe.”
And, aside from small text at the top of the screen, it’s not clear that the site being pitched is endorsed by the government, which is something I think you’d want to put out there as a Good Housekeeping seal of approval.
Instead, annualcreditreport.com just sounds like a less-creative competitor to freecreditreport.com.
I don’t anticipate these songs getting stuck in my head.
