Soon to be Stuck in Your Head

By JEN CHEN

I’ve long been obsessed with Celsius Tannery’s catchy radio jingles. You know, that easily-stuck-in-your-head refrain, “Oooh, that Celsius Tannery/Love the way they flatter me.” So, when I heard that a new version recently made its debut, I had to track it down. Like the others, it has a Caribbean-reggae-hip-hop sound and includes such classic lines as “For peace of mind … and a dark behind” and “There’s only one place that can tan your cans, like the white sands of the Virgin Islands.”

It turns out that the jingles are penned and produced by BicMedia, a small, Leawood-based operation run by brothers Austin and Julian Bickford. According to 27-year-old Austin, their philosophy with jingles is to “create more songs that feature a business.” Julian and another staffer, Adrian Bartholomew, wrote the lyrics and found a woman who sounds like Pink to sing the chorus. Their first effort aired in 2005, and every year since then, they’ve kept the chorus and changed the verse.

Julian and Adrian also double as rappers in the commercials. “Adrian’s Trinidadian, so he’s able to contribute his island influence there,” says 30-year-old Julian.

Austin adds that Julian “fancies himself, once in a while, as the eighth-best white rapper in Kansas City.” He adds, “He does a variety of things that most people wouldn’t recognize when you look at him.”

The Bickfords say that the song-style jingles have garnered a lot of attention from the radio-listening public. “I remember listening to the radio when someone called in and requested it,” Julian says. They’ve heard that one local DJ ran a contest: He included a snippet of their jingle with two others and asked, “Which one isn’t a real song?” They have also created an MTV-video-style commercial — complete with lip-synchers, tanning bed shots and nightclub scenes — which has just started airing on a few cable channels.

“It’s one of the first jingles [we] put out there. It’s been a fun one to have,” Julian says. “A lot of people recognize that more than our other work, really.”