Backstreet On A Bun
Source: Montreal Gazette
Backstreet on a bun: Seeking the 'tweens' market, fast food empires are packaging pop with the fries
By Alison ap
RobertsBee Staff Writer
(Published Aug. 28, 2000)
Just what we needed: a big helping of marketing that cooks up a fast-food-and-saccharine-teen-pop entree spiced with high-tech seasoning. Welcome to the Sappy Meal.
It seems McDonald's and Burger King want to supersize their audience-appeal for bigger kids, those weaned on the mini burgers and toys of kiddie meals who now want their music full-sized and their toys musical and high-tech.
Burger King starts singing a pop tune today with a Backstreet Boys promotion. With any value meal, customers can plunk down $2.99 for one of three CDs or a 45-minute video that offers interviews and behind-the-scenes shots of the group's Millennium tour. Even for die-hard fans who already own all the Boys recordings, there's something new here. Each CD has a sneak preview from the group's upcoming album, the new song "It's True."
McDonald's actually started the music first -- with a promotion that began earlier this month and lets customers plop down $4.99 with their meal to get a side order of music on a high-tech gizmo, the HitClip, which plays a 60-second mini-recording of "Stronger" from teen-pop star Britney Spears, or "It's Gonna Be Me" from 'N Sync. (You can also get regular old CDs or videos from these artists and others, including a hip-hop-flavored CD compilation called "The Groove," featuring the likes of Joe. R. Kelly, Mary J. Blige, Q-Tip and DMX; and a Latin-accented CD called "The Rhythm," featuring cuts from Carlos Vives, Thalia and Enrique Iglesias.)
Jack in the Box is sort of an honorary member of this chorus, although it didn't sell recordings, with its recent ad campaign featuring the fake band, the Meaty Cheesy Boys. These Boys are to a real band what Velveeta is to real cheese, except the band is funny.
Such campaigns are aiming to please kids such as Ryan Sturges, a 15-year-old Sacramento guy with a good appetite who likes to turn up the volume on his music and his french fries. The other day he had a super-sized lunch at the McDonald's on Freeport Boulevard.
"People were yelling about the music players and how they were low," he said. He wasn't interested in the Mickey D offerings. But it wasn't because a fast-food outlet isn't hip enough to sell music.
"If they had a CD with Korn and System of a Down and Slipknot and it was cheap, I wouldn't not get it 'cause it was McDonald's. Some people might care more what other people think."Spinning a pop-music promotion is an old song. "It's just another phase. It's nothing new," says William Schurk, director of the music library and sound recording archives at Bowling Green State University. He is an expert on the many pop-cultural uses of music over the years.
Schurk points to the gee-whiz promotion of the early '30s, when a Mills Brothers recording of a jingle for Crisco was pressed onto a 3-inch diameter cardboard record that actually played! It was a cutting-edge blend of pop and high-tech of the time.
What has changed over the years: The targets of such pop promotions keep getting younger. Schurk says marketing to young teens and "tweens" (the latter is the term of choice for those kids caught between elementary and teenage cultures, usually 11- and 12-year-olds) dates back to the '60s, a trend that paved the way for the appearance of such heartthrobs as Bobby Sherman and the Monkees on cereal boxes."Everything's been adopted as fair game," Schurk says.
Pop groups such as the Backstreet Boys push the age-limit ever downward to captivate even the kindergarten set.
"Five-year-old kids love the Backstreet Boys as well as adults," says Michelle Dominguez, a Burger King spokeswoman. "This promotion its definitely going to cover the entire fan base, which is just huge."
Burger King has designed this campaign to reach toddlers, too. For those who prefer superheroes to CDs, there are "Cyber Crusaders."
"The Crusaders are the Backstreet Boys in their superhero form," Dominguez says matter-of-factly. These crusaders will protect the Earth in an upcoming Web animation series (www.backstreetproject.com) and in the minds of young Burger King customers, who will receive the crusader figurines in their Kids Meals. (No, they won't protect anyone from dietary fat.)
The promotional concept behind these fast-food campaigns may just be variations on an old tune, but ever cheaper high-tech wizardry makes the fun and games more and more wondrous.
Each of the Burger King Backstreet Boys CDs becomes a CD-ROM when you pop it into your computer, where you can watch streaming video clips, download screen-savers, wallpaper, create personalized scrapbook pages and click onto cool Web sites.
Nonetheless, the McDonald's promotion wins the high-tech prize by unveiling a whole new itty-bitty sound system. The HitClip gizmos are made by Tiger Electronics. (Don't underestimate this firm; it unleashed Furbies on the world.) The gizmos made their debut in this McDonald's campaign -- and if the experience is any preview, they are going to be one noisy fad. Most local McDonald's ran out of them within two weeks. They should be in stores within the next couple weeks.
The mini-players are small enough to fit into a pocket or clip onto a backpack or clothing and they play microchip recordings the size of postage stamps. The McDonald's HitClips come with little microchip recordings by Britney Spears and 'N Sync.
Lana Simon, a spokeswoman for Tiger, says HitClips and McDonald's go together like hamburger and buns.
"You think pop culture, you think McDonald's," Simon said.
All the pop-music marketing is business as usual as far as kids are concerned. "I think it's no big deal," says Melanie Zeh, a 15-year-old who hasn't really been excited about fast-food giveaways since she was a little girl who was thrilled by the miniature Barbies that came with her burgers. But her musical tastes don't spin toward the likes of Britney Spears or 'N Sync or the Backstreet Boys. She's more of a Blink 182, Dave Matthews, Deftones, Sarah McLachlan type.
Even Melanie's younger sister, Heather, who is 12 and a big-time Backstreet Boys fan, isn't planning to bug her parents to take her to Burger King to get a CD. She's not ready to rock her fast-food world. She likes it the way it used to be. "I love the Backstreet Boys," she says, with feeling. "But with fast food, I like getting Furbies or the Beanie Babies more than CDs."
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