BOSTON -- Singing the praise of candy and rental cars is not your typical job, but it's a talent Michael Beaudoin has been honing lately, and so far it's earned him thousands of dollars.

In the past 18 months, the 24-year-old Billerica, Mass. resident has won three nationwide commercial jingle contests, for such well-known brands as Snickers, Tic-Tac and Budget Rent-A-Car, racking up a total of $60,000.

“I have a knack for this, I guess,” he says, referring to his jingle-writing abilities.

His most recent success, this July in the Tic-Tac Moments Video Contest, earned Beaudoin a $10,000 grand prize. Not bad for a guy who just graduated college a few years ago.

For the contest's highest honor, Beaudoin produced, scored, and starred in a 30-second musical video featuring a race with his cat for a pack of Tic-Tacs.

Quirky? Yes.

In the half-minute comic drama, Beaudoin, brown-haired and unshaven, leaps up from a chair to race his cat down stairs, through a house, to a spilled container of mints on the kitchen counter.

Set to strummed chords and the repeated vocal phrase, “Want to beat the cat to the Tic-Tac,” Beaudoin pumps his arms, gives it his all and does beat the cat to the mints. He pops one in his mouth, holds up a pack of the green mints and smiles, while the words “Joy, Exhilaration, Refreshment, Success” appear next to him on the screen.

After winning the recent contest, Beaudoin may have felt some amount of success, joy, exhilaration and even refreshment. He may also have begun to feel a bit like a pro.

Entering such contests to launch a career in music wasn’t exactly what Beaudoin planned, but he’ll take it.

In 2006, the musician and songwriter graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell with a degree in audio engineering.

Wanting to pursue a career in music, but also knowing he had to “pay the bills,” Beaudoin spent time working at audio studios in Somerville and Cambridge.

A few months after graduating, and still trying to find his way into the music business, Beaudoin’s sister brought to his attention a jingle-writing contest for the Snickers candy bar.

He entered the contest -- his first -- “just on a whim,” he said.

Beaudoin’s one-minute homemade video, about an ordinary guy who acquires super powers by eating a Snickers bar, went on to win the contest’s $25,000 grand prize.

Upon reaching the final round, Beaudoin said, he was flown to Los Angeles, where, clad in a makeshift superhero’s costume, he performed his song for a panel of judges, including the celebrity Nick Lachey.

Beaudoin said he was “awestruck” by the experience, and by the $25,000 check he was handed on stage.

“Here I am, wearing a towel and a cape in front of Nick Lachey,” Beaudoin remembered.

Bolstered by the success in the Snickers contest, he began to look for other jingle-writing contests to see how far his newfound venture could take him.

He competed, with limited success, in contests held by Oreo and Quizno’s. Then in April 2008, he entered a video in the Budget Rent-A-Car’s “Flip for Budget” contest.

In June, after two months of being judged against other online submissions, Beaudoin’s two-minute musical video about how to travel on a budget was awarded the $25,000 top prize.

Set to guitar and a vocal chorus of “Traveling on a budget, oh how I love it,” the video offers tips on how to keep traveling costs down. Beaudoin filmed scenes over a few days at spots around Billerica.

When thinking of video ideas for the Budget contest, he said he kept in mind his family’s old van, with its 240,000-plus miles, in which they had taken two trips from Maine to Florida.

“I thought about ‘How am I going to travel on a budget in that?” he said.

He said he put together a “game plan” for the video, which he then veered from when necessary.

In contrast, his idea for the Tic-Tac video, of racing his cat for the mints, came to him more spontaneously, he said, when his cat woke him from sleep.

He said he did have some difficulty with the Tic-Tac contest, partially because of his previous successes.

“There was a little pressure for that,” he said. “Because I won the others.”

Aside from the $60,000 he’s earned from his three videos, Beaudoin said he also has received quite a bit of exposure from the high-profile contests – exposure he hopes to use to help launch a career in music.

After his Snickers win, he was shown in a photo With Nick Lachey on the Web site People.com, and Beaudoin has been mentioned on entertainment programs such as Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight.

This July, he was on the radio show “Matty in the Morning” on Boston’s Kiss 108.

Beaudoin said he’s surprised by the apparent popularity of his videos, including his Snickers song. The video won the contest more than a year-and-a-half ago, but it has become popular on the Web site, www.Youtube.com

“People page me on the phone, on speaker phone, and they play the song,” he said.

He sees the commercial jingle as a powerful tool in its ability to reach people and stay with them. He calls the best commercials those with songs he can’t escape.

“I consider [a commercial] effective if it’s in my head all the time,” he said. “The whole point of marketing is to get the ad to hypnotize [people].”

For now, Beaudoin plans to take a break from contests and work on some more practical aspects of building a career. He said he already has some contacts in the recording industry, which he’ll try to use to slowly establish himself.

Still, despite his newfound career aspirations, and the popularity of his work so far, he has no immediate plans to give up his current job, which he says he enjoys.

Eventually, though, he knows where he’d like to be.

“I’d really like to escape my cubicle,” he said. “You gotta follow the dream.”