She has graced dozens of magazine covers and innumerable bedroom walls. She has starred in TV commercials, has her own clothing line, and will make her feature-film debut in summer 2000.
No, she’s not Heidi Klum, or any other supermodel, although her legions of obsessed fans will tell you she’s better looking than any living creature. The operative word here is living.
The celebrity in question is Lara Croft, heroine of the Tomb Raider video-game series produced by Eidos Interactive, San Francisco. The three titles in the action-adventure series have sold more than nine million copies to date. But sales figures alone don’t express the character’s huge popularity.
“She was the first video game sex symbol,” says Rick Austin, on-air promotions director for the SCI FI Channel,New York City. “Of all video-game characters, she’s the only one that people respond to as a person.”
The cable network launched an ad campaign in June dubbed I Am Sci Fi that aims to “change people’s perceptions about what science fiction is,” explains vp-creative and marketing Josh Greenberg. So it went looking for celebrity spokespeople who would help “expand the definition of sci fi,” and signed up rap singer Busta Rhymes, tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, rock band Everclear, actress/singer Traci Lords, and Croft. The concept of an animated character being treated as human “is very sci fi,” says Austin.
Croft did her first endorsement work last fall in TV spots for Sony Computer Entertainment America’s PlayStation console system. While she may be the hottest video-game character around, she’s not the only one moonlighting as a marketing partner: Crash Bandicoot, a creature that stars in an eponymous game series, wisecracked his way through TV spots for Pizza Hut last fall that never identified the character by name.
Some viewers scratched their heads wondering what that strange creature (actually, an actor in a Crash costume) harassing Pizza Hut patrons was supposed to be. But the chain was able to prove itself hip to the teens and young adults that make up the bulk of hardcore gamers – who spent $4.96 billion on systems and software in 1998, according to PC Data, Reston, VA.
“The target demo [for the Pizza Hut ad] was pizza-eating high school kids,” explains Simon Tonner, marketing director for GamePro magazine publisher IDG Games Media Group, San Francisco. “You didn’t have to tell them who Crash Bandicoot was.”
“Today’s kids are spending just as much time playing video-games as they are watching TV or going to the movies,” says Liv Learner, assistant manager-communications for General Mills, Minneapolis. The Mills has been sprinkling its entertainment tie-in slate with video-game promotions for several years because “it lets kids know that we’re totally aware of what they’re into.”
Already in 1999, General Mills has worked with Nintendo on a first-quarter program that offered game tips on 11 million packages of Betty Crocker Fruit Roll Ups, and with Sony on a second-quarter effort dangling $5 rebates on such popular games as Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Spyro the Dragon, Gran Turismo, and Rugrats: Search for Reptar. That pitch came on 20 million cereal boxes.
“Video-games today are very challenging. You spend so much time with these characters, you become very emotionally attached to them,” says Tonner. “The characters have become household names and a great marketing tool.”
GamePro received 50,000 entries this spring for a Win a Date with Lara Croft campaign, which celebrated the magazine’s 10th anniversary. Readers vied for a chance to spend the day with a model who makes personal appearances as Lara, along with hundreds of hardware, software, and other secondary prizes. “GamePro readers (average age is 17) are much more responsive than the average [magazine] reader, and they’re more attracted to these kinds of promotions,” Tonner says.
Hollywood or bust
While Lara is queen, “we’ve seen a lot of other characters become popular, especially since Hollywood has picked up on the craze,” notes Tonner.
The video-game aisle has been script fodder in Tinseltown for most of the 1990s, even though it hasn’t always been a winning proposition. (Mortal Kombat earned $70.4 million in 1995, spawning a 1997 sequel; Super Mario Bros. earned a paltry $20.9 million in 1993; Wing Commander crashed and burned last February.) But output increases significantly over the next year, with Paramount releasing Donkey Kong Country: The Legend of the Crystal Coconut direct to video in November and giving Lara her shot at immortality next summer in Tomb Raider: The Movie. Promo partners are being sought for both titles.
Universal Studios, which created and holds licensing and promotion rights to Crash Bandicoot (which is published and distributed by Sony), has taken the game-leveraging one step further than most by creating Universal Interactive Studios, a branch of the company’s Consumer Products Group dedicated to developing video-games with license-friendly characters. Consumer Products marketing vp Jim Wilson moved to the endeavor full time this spring (June promo).
Pokemon: The Experience
Movie studio Warner Bros. jumps on the bandwagon in November by releasing Pokemon The Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back, the first theatrical title to cash in on one of the hottest toys in the world market. (The animated film actually was produced by Shogakukan Productions and released in Japan last year.) Burger King is readying a major tie-in effort.
The Pokemon craze, originally unleashed by video-game giant Nintendo in early 1996 in its native Japan, began with a title for the Nintendo Game Boy hand-held system. The character first reached U.S. shores last September through the release of a syndicated TV show (recently acquired by the WB Network), followed soon after by the rollout of two video-games, Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue. The property now has more than 45 licensees.
Pokemon stumbled in its first promotional work: Saddled with an under-cooperative master toy licensee (Hasbro reportedly was stingy about which of the 100-plus characters it would supply) and cultural hype that had yet to peak, Louisville-based KFC was left with bucketloads of unsold Pokemon bean bags after a holiday ’98 campaign. Nobody expects that to happen again (at least until the phenomenon has run its course), which is why marketers are lining up for a Poke. General Mills will dive in this fall with a promotion for its fruit snacks.
Redmond, WA-based Nintendo of America and Blockbuster Entertainment, Dallas, last month launched a revenue-generating promo to herald the release of Pokemon Snap, the latest game title. Kiosks in 4,700 stores allow game buyers to plug in their cartridges and print out stickers for a $3 charge. Nintendo is spending $5 million in TV and print advertising, P-O-P, retail promotions, and direct mail to support.
Nintendo looks for promotional partners for all its product launches (as do most game manufacturers), and also “as a rolling activity to stay out in front of people,” says vp-marketing George Harrison. For the latter purpose, the company generally likes to develop multiple-title programs that focus on a game platform rather than on specific software, Harrison says. One of Nintendo’s biggest efforts this fall will center on the Nov. 22 release of Donkey Kong 64, which features another popular character.
Hopefully, no one wants to Win a Date with Donkey Kong. But you never know.
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