A Jet2 ad is now the sound of the summer. System1’s Andrew Tindall believes this is just our latest reminder that jingles still work... even in 2025.
“Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday! And right now, you can save £50 per person. That’s £200 off for a family of four!”
Unless you’re old enough to go to school with Kevin Keller, you’ve heard the viral sensation that is the Jet2 Holidays voiceover, a brilliantly consistent, TV-first campaign that’s now lodged in the cultural cortex of the entire UK.
First came ironic holiday fail videos dubbed with the ad’s audio.
Then came festival season, where crowds shouted the tagline in unison as Jess Glynne sang on stage.
Now?
Creators rack up 22 million views just by doing mundane tasks to that voiceover.
It. Is. Everywhere.
By all the metrics “culture experts” love (buzz, engagement, your neighbor’s dog barking when it comes on TikTok), this thing is off the charts. But more importantly, it’s clearly got the country in a stranglehold.
However, I bet my socks that it’s reached its peak as Capital Radio has brilliantly reunited Jess and the Jet2 voiceover artist on their breakfast show.
Now what?
You’ll have seen the hot takes from those who treat viral marketing like it’s the holy grail of modern marketing.
But they’ve all missed the bigger lesson.
This isn’t a case study for brands chasing free earned reach. It’s a masterclass in the power of audio.
Let’s start with the obvious.
Visual attention is collapsing.
I’m writing this with a laptop on my knees, LinkedIn open on my phone, Peep Show on the TV, and my boyfriend watching drag queens react to Netflix shows on YouTube.
We’re not dual-screening any more.
We’re in a screen multiverse.
But like a good marketer, I won’t rely on my own experience and assume this holds true for everyone.
ITV and Thinkbox conducted some impressive, robust research titled ‘Earning Attention’ in 2023. With cameras in the homes of normal people (ie, those who don’t work in marketing – we must accept that marketers aren’t normal), they showed that now 71% of TV doesn't get high visual active attention but only 18% of the time was someone distracted by their ears. Fully recommend exploring the whole thing here.
That’s the big media insight of the decade: you can’t close your ears.
This alone is an obvious demonstration of the power of audio in marketing. But it gets better.
System1’s research with Effie Worldwide analyzed thousands of case studies across four continents. We linked creative choices to in-market outcomes and found that emotion, fluency, and time are the three biggest weapons in the effectiveness arsenal. Combine them right, and you’re 21 times more likely to generate incremental profit growth.
And guess what stood out?
Audio assets, specifically jingles and sonic devices, outperformed most other brand assets in driving high brand recognition.
This isn’t just because visual attention is down v auditory attention.
It’s because audio is a memory machine.
It builds memory structures the way I build Guinness can towers on a Friday night, in great volumes and at a great pace.
As Richard Kirk, the smartest person in media, pointed out five months ago. YouGov released the most memorable slogans in UK advertising and half of them were jingles.
Let’s make jingles cool again?
Still designing digital for “sound off”?
Dust off that old best-practice deck and bin it. TikTok, Reels, and Shorts have turned short-form creativity into a sound-on environment. I’ve seen it in my own research with TikTok. Analyzing nearly 1,000 ads across eight markets, we were able to use System1’s Test Your Ad Social to identify which brand assets were recognized in the first two seconds of each ad and examine the average impact this had on sipping and brand recognition.
Again, audio wins. It causes less skipping while still building plenty of brand recognition, a much better strategy than simply editing a logo on to your ad. Honestly, the top marketers I work with are now scrambling to build distinctive audio assets.
The evidence is clear: audio assets are key to building brand awareness in a digital world.
As a former FMCG brand manager, I’ve committed all the sins, including building an entire campaign, running out of money, and asking my agency what stock music they had lying around.
I now know that music should lead the ad, not chase after it.
System1 once tested the same Werther’s Original ad with three different soundtracks. The Scott Matthew version made the dad look like he was on day release. The Bread version turned it into a joyful skip through time. The music alone boosted the Star Rating (our predictive measure of long-term effectiveness) from 3 to 5 Stars.
Les Binet and Massive Music released new data on this at Mad//Fest this year. They found that campaigns that used music customized to fit an ad were able to reduce price sensitivity sevenfold in the IPA databank.
Music that causes MORE surprise increased the chance that a campaign will create Fame fivefold, and more memorable music drove significantly more direct response effects.
Don’t chase unicorns.
Build repeatable results.
So, I’d hate to see the boom in the Jet2 campaign be used as fodder to sell marketers on a campaign that will only work if it goes viral.
Taking a step back, these really are unicorns. For marketing to work, you need more than a couple of million views for an average of a few seconds in a couple of weeks.
I’m not saying this is what has happened to Jet2. It’s gone mega viral to the point where this will have a genuine impact, billions of online and in-person branded interactions. However, so few campaigns actually reach that goal. And if anyone promises to reveal the secret sauce for cracking this, they are either snake oil salesmen or simply delusional.
No one knew this Jet2 campaign was going to go boom. Sure, they loaded the dice in their favor by consistently investing in an emotional campaign over enough time to the point where consumers were actually able to pay their ads enough attention and latch on to this idea.
However, the real lesson here is one of effective marketing. Something we can all do to create expected, repeatable results. And that’s the power of audio in getting branded attention, being distinctive, and stirring an emotional response, being applied to advertising that allows you to show up over the years.
So, at work today, ask yourself three questions.
What does my brand sound like?
Have I invested enough to create any distinctive audio assets that my brands own?
And will my ads work with my eyes closed?
If you cannot answer these, it’s time to turn the volume up and learn from this Jet2 audio masterclass.
Andrew Tindall is a senior leader in the advertising industry and SVP of Global Partnerships at System1, where he champions creative effectiveness and evidence-based marketing. Known for his sharp thinking on out-of-home, emotional advertising, and brand growth, he’s become a go-to voice on how creativity and data can work together. With experience across major brands like Diageo and Bacardi, Andrew now helps global agencies and marketers make better ads that actually work, contributing regularly to panels, podcasts, and the occasional punchy LinkedIn rant.
