Advertising Jingles That Became Hit Songs

You know this song- "We've Only Just Begun" by The Carpenters. It was heard at every wedding you went to for about twenty years, and a lot of graduations, too. You might think it pretty clever for a bank to use it in an ad inviting young couples to establish their accounts. But couldn't they afford to use the hit version? 

But that's backwards. "We've Only Just Begun" was written by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols specifically to advertise The Crocker Bank in Mendocino, California. Local non-actors were recruited to appear in the commercial, which debuted in 1970. Richard Carpenter heard the ad, liked the song, and reached out to the ad agency for the music rights. The Carpenters recorded an expanded version that proved to be a hit and helped them win the Best New Artist Grammy in 1971. It's not the only advertising jingle that was so catchy it became a song, as you will learn in a list of nine such stories at Mental Floss.