Dec. 12 is here and that means one thing: Cheaper toilet paper! Another Shopee jingle!
Last month's 11.11 campaign brought us this surprising number featuring the forever young Ann Kok grooving with co-stars half her age without breaking a sweat.
The month before that saw Shopee's 10.10 Brands Festival advertised with a tune that you've probably heard before but cannot name.
And who can forget the grandmother of all Shopee jingles, this 2019 classic that catapulted the e-commerce platform into the ranks of purveyors of questionable-but-unforgettable marketing and spawned a million toilet jokes.
Love them or hate them, there's no denying that these Shopee jingles work (and are here to stay).
These earworms assault you at every plausible corner, from empty MRT station platforms to within the metal confines of a lift.
Even when you think you're alone in the wee hours of the day, scrolling in the dark, a Shopee jingle will find you to hammer home the reminder that it has the LOWEST PRICES OF THE YEAR.
All these to say that in the lead up to a campaign like 11.11 or 12.12 Birthday Sale, Shopee is always right there at the back of our minds, thanks in no small part to these melodies.
And so it might come as a surprise that the Shopee jingles are actually the creations of one man and his production house.
The Shopee Jingle Man
Courtesy of Hubert Ng.
That's Hubert Ng.
The 31-year-old Singaporean is effable, earnest, and smiles a lot in person. Ng and his team of three at his production house, Bertyverse, produce a wide range of entertainment content besides Shopee jingles.
Ng, for instance, wrote the theme song music for the China releases of "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" and "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" this year.
Compared to movie theme songs, a jingle might seem like simple work but they're different products with different purposes, hence different approaches.
Ng, who graduated from the Singapore Management University and turned down a job offer from a management consultancy to write music six years ago, was eager to share with us the process of crafting a Shopee jingle.
Everything starts with a strong hook
Without a strong hook to make listeners stay, the jingle fails even before it starts.
For example, the "Boom, boom, boom, boom" line from the 1998 Vengaboys hit song was the hook that eventually turned into "Shopee - pi - pi" in the 11. 11 campaign jingle.
For many listeners, that melody line served as a nostalgic dog whistle that signalled to them to listen further.
Other chart-toppers that Ng adapted for Shopee jingles this year include Aqua's 1997 song "Barbie Girl" and Smile.dk's 1998 hit "Butterfly".
"These were classics that we grew up listening to. Also because it has been proven that oh, these melodies really work."
If classic songs are not available due to licensing rights or simply a lack of viable options, Ng can turn to even older songs that are in the public domain (like Beethoven's 9th Symphony which was used in October's campaign) or create a new song from scratch.
A snug fit
A fire melody is of no use if it cannot fit snugly with the lyrics a.k.a the message that Shopee wants to put out.
One of the biggest pain points lie in trying to fit the campaign's name with the melody.
It's a whole lot easier for campaigns like the 9.9 or 10.10 sales because monosyllabic words are more flexible to work with.
It's a no-brainer then that the 11.11 campaigns are particularly difficult to create jingles for because it's so hard to fit in the six-syllable "Eleven-Eleven".
Simple and straightforward
If you listen closely to the Shopee jingles, you might realise that they all utilise the same base instruments.
That, said Ng, is to maintain a coherent sound that listeners will associate with Shopee.
"We try to reuse instruments for every Shopee jingle and then add some effects onto them as long as they don't sound too different," Ng said.
The idea is that jingles have to be simple and straightforward in order to avoid ear fatigue and ensure that listeners walk away remembering the mesasage.
This means Ng avoids cramping too much information into the lyrics or creating overly-complicated instrumentation.
It even extends to the structure of the jingle, said Ng.
"Our jingles consist of the chorus and then a very short verse, and then the chorus again. But the second chorus is usually like escalated, happy or excited. This formula works."
What makes a Shopee jingle a success?
Considering then that Shopee jingles are essentially ads that encourage people to shop, does the success of a jingle hinge on the amount of sales made on the platform that month?
It's hard to quantify the success of a jingle that way, said Winston Goh, Head of Marketing at Shopee.
Recently, Shopee has been putting out jingles in the latter part of the year because bigger sales happened to occur during those months.
Additionally, there are too many factors at play to make a correlation between the release of a jingle and sales.
A more plausible measure of a jingle's success is brand recall, said Goh -- basically, whether customers can remember your brand
"I've had friends say, 'Hey, I'm looking forward to what's coming next.'
So, this idea of jingles as a marketing lead -- I've also told my team that maybe we shouldn't do jingles anymore. But then everyone is looking forward to the next one."
Personally for Goh, his idea of a successful jingle is actually quite simple: The jingle has to be familiar enough that kids are able to sing it, and it has to evoke happiness and associate Shopee with positive associations.
Something for you t0 chew on next time you're trying to get that Shopee jingle out of your head.
Top images: Shopee, Hubert Ng.