Teen Idols Get Dot-Com Jobs - as Caped Crusaders
From: Wall Street Journal
The Backstreet Boys Are Stars in Online Cartoons, Comics -- And Burger King, Too
By Anna Wilde Mathews
Staff reporter of the Wall Street Journal
The Backstreet Boys have a new gig: starring as costumed superheroes in a comic book and Web - based cartoon series.
The new animation Web site, backstreetproject.com, will in turn be the focus of an extravagant promotional campaign from Burger King this fall. The burger tie-in --the kind of high powered marketing blitz usually reserved for beanie babies and plastic dinosaurs from "Jurassic Park"--present a high stakes test for both the pop band and the web's potential as an entertainment medium.
Once it starts, the ad blitz will be hard to miss: Burger King plans to hand out an estimated 45 Million plastic action figures of the Backstreet superheroes in kids' meals and put their pictures in its 8,500 North American restaurants. Food bags, door decals, and posters all will promote the characters and their web site. Burger King, which is sponsoring the Backstreet Boys' coming concert tour, also plans to spend $15 million or more on TV ads, including one spot in which some of the boys morph into their animated alter-egos.
The campaign, expected to be announced today, is perhaps the most expensive yet to promote web-based animation or, indeed, any form of pure online entertainment. It's a genre that is far from proven. To date, the Internet hasn't produced anything remotely resembling a "Hit" by Hollywood standards, partly because online episodes are usually limited to only a few minutes. It remains to be seen whether a Web venture can sustain the kind of successful entertainment franchise generated by TV and movies.
It's also an open question how much appeal the superhero adventures, and all the commercial hype, will have for the Backstreet Boys' core fans: teenage girls. Marketing experts note that teenagers, an even their younger siblings, are a Web-savvy crowd and notoriously skeptical of bald attemps to target them with marketing. Teens are "a very astute group," says Cynthia Cohen, president of Strategic Mindshare, a Menlo Park, Calif., strategy consulting firm. "If they think it's too silly, if they think its too young, if they think it's too aggressive, that will be problematic. This is not an unsophisticated audience." Ultimately any franchise's success depends on its quality, she adds.
Still, according to Media Metrix, the band's official fan site, backstreetboys.com, is one of just a few celebrity-named Web sites that gets a significant traffic � 284,000 visitors, 70% of them female, in June, the most recent month available.
The first Backstreet Boys comic book, "Menace of the Death Queen," released in February with a $10 price tag, sold out its 50,000 print run in six weeks, after the bacnd promoted it at concerts and on the fan site. Magic amulets smuggled out of alien spaceship transform Nick, Howie, Brian, A.J., and Kevin into a posse of cartoon crusaders, with accessories symbolizing their very special powers: Nick aka Ninja man is a martial arts master with a sword and a gold staff. Brian or Top Speed wields a flaming basketball.
Behind the superheroes there is Stan Lee, one of the creators of such Marval Entertainment Inc. characters as the X-Men and Spiderman. His Encino, Calif., company, Stan Lee Media Inc., plans to release four Backstreet Boys comic books each year, selling them at the band's concerts, in record stores and on the animations web site. Also for sale on the site will be t-shirts, hats, pens - and advertising space for sponsors, naturally. Users will be able to play games and create home pages.
Ken Williams, Stan Lee Media's president and chief executive, says the band's popularity and Burger King's marketing muscle can make the cartoon the basis for a profitable business. "Not only do we have a ver hot, very topical group, but we have tremendous cross - marketing opportunities," he says. "We're hopeful this could be one of those breakthrough properties.
The Backstreet Boys will receive 65% of the Web venture's profits after the company recoups costs, Stan Lee Media says. Eventually, it hopes to build the Backstreet Boys superheroes into a licensed property for a TV show, movie or theme park.
For Burger King, a unit of Diago PLC, the superhero tie in is appealing because it draws young burger-munchers into restaurants, says Brian Gies, director of youth a family marketing. Tray liners and bags invite costumers to "Match the right cyber crusader to the correct Backstreet Boys." A version of the chain's famous paper crown will feature a Backstreet Boy on each prong. But the burger chain is also aiming at older customers: Videos and compact disks released for the promotion will be available for purchase at the restaurants for $2.99. "We're talking to all of our consumers," Mr. Gies says.
(* There were two paragraphs here that didn't have to do with BSB so I skipped them*)
The Backstreet superheroes' first four minute episode is expected to be released on the site on Aug 27, with future installments coming every two weeks. Promotional emails have already gone out to about 1.5 million fans.
It sounds good to Kim Lermond, a 17-year-old high school student in Brunswick, Main, whose bedroom is lined with posters of the band. She bought a copy of the Backstreet Boys' comic book after spotting it on the fan site, although she had never purchased a comic book before. As for the web site, though, there's just one problem: She doesn't have an internet connection at home and will have to make a trip to the library to check it out.
Back