Gap’s new ad, featuring famous pop-girl group, Katseye, dancing to the 2003 Kelis song “Milkshake” has taken over our feeds and earworms. With 13 million views on Youtube and over 80 million on TikTok, Gap’s Better in Denim campaign has reached millions of potential customers and has won over the online community.
If you’ve found yourself humming to the tune or rewatching the ad for the tenth time today, we don’t blame you. It’s catchy, it’s memorable, and it’s scientifically proven to be stuck in your mind.
But first, if you’re unfamiliar with Gap’s advertisement game, here’s a quick recap:
Gap’s music and choreograph centered commercials began in the 90s and early 00s, featuring stars like Madonna, Aerosmith, Lenny Kravitz, among others. These commercials were major hits in the advertisement world, and placed Gap as a culturally relevant brand in the early 2000s.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t until 2024 that Gap’s marketing team revived their famous dancing ads after Gap stopped making them in the 2010s.
Gap’s fresh faced dancing ads began with their Spring 2024 Linen Moves Campaign, featuring South African singer Tyla dancing to Jungle’s Back on 74. The ad’s popularity in social media signaled to the company’s marketing team to keep going down the choreograph path.
And they did. Proving to be major successes in the marketing world.
Recent Gap campaigns have featured artists like Troye Sivan, Tyla, and now, Katseye.
But why are these dancing ads so memorable?
Our senses are the key.
Our memories are best encoded through multisensory experiences. Have you ever tried to remember a grocery list just from reading it? Not very successful, right. Now, have you tried to make up a song for your grocery list? Foolproof technique for better memory.
This is what we mean by multisensory experiences. Our memories thrive when we add sensory cues to them. Smell, taste, sight, touch, and sound are the magic combination for more durable memories (Harvard Medicine Magazine). This is because the more sensory cues we add to a memory, the more neurons that fire in the brain. This neuronal activity creates connections within our brain that encode our memories; so more cues, means more firing, means better encoding, means better memory (Harvard Medicine Magazine).
Music, in particular, has an even larger effect on our brains. According to an article in the Harvard Medicine Magazine, music lights up almost all of our brain to create a memorably rich experience. Listening to music creates an emotional response thanks to our hippocampus and amygdala; a pleasurable experience thanks to our limbic system; and a moving one (quite literally) thanks to our motor system (Harvard Medicine Magazine). All of these areas in our brain light up when we listen to music. Which explains why it’s easier to remember the lyrics of a song than the notes for your exam, unless you sing them.
Now, add an eye-catching choreograph to a catchy tune and BOOM you get an unforgettable ad.
At Vaquero Advertising, we understand the power of our senses and harness them to create attention-grabbing campaigns! Our talented and qualified team focuses on the correct methodology to create likeable and memorable advertisements for your brand.
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