Why '90s ads are unforgettable

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's __________.

The best part of waking up, is _______ in your cup!

Got ____?

If you can identify these brands based on tagline alone, it's possible you... are a 90s kid.

The '90s were arguably the peak moment of advertisers trying to make an impression on us that could last for decades. They got us to sing their jingles and say their slogans. These kinds of ads are called brand or image marketing. And it became a lot harder to pull off in the 21st century.

On today's show, we look back at the history of advertising, and two pretty unassuming products that totally transformed ads.

This show was hosted by Sarah Gonzalez and Kenny Malone. It was produced by James Sneed, and engineered by James Willets. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez, and edited by Molly Messick. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is planet money from NPR.
0:04.0	Okay, do you guys remember any
0:10.0	any commercials from like our childhood or growing up.
0:14.3	The geopat, ch chia, the cough drops,
0:17.8	re-cola, or meow mix, the meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow,
0:21.5	meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow.
0:23.6	These are my sisters, Sasha and the twins, Carla and Karina.
0:27.6	There's no like jingles anymore.
0:30.1	Like, I literally just had this conversation the other night.
0:34.0	Surely some of you have thought this before that they just don't make ads like they used to.
0:40.0	And like yeah, maybe ads in the 90s were cheesy and obnoxious, but they were
0:45.9	memorable. We would sing their jingles, we knew their whole script, like my twin sisters
0:50.4	used to reenact this one commercial over and over when they were seven years old.
0:54.4	So you guys had these little like go-kart kind of things and you guys would like crash them into each other.
1:00.0	Crash into each other.
1:01.2	Get out and get mad that one of us didn't have insurance.
1:04.7	I just remember you guys going like do you have car insurance?
1:08.5	Why don't you have a car insurance?
1:11.2	Because insurance is too expensive.
1:13.6	Get so low.
1:14.8	Oh my God, Karina.
1:17.6	We did not really watch that much TV when we were kids
	...

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