Characters lend names to song and sales - marketing cartoon character licensed products - Inside Licensing

Discount Store News, June 3, 1991

Characters Lend Names to Song and Sales

Who could ever forget Kermit the Frog's touching rendition of "It's Not Easy Being Green"?

Or, The Chipmunks' Christmas song plea " . . . all I want's a hoola hoop?"

Licensing and music have always gone hand-in-hand. The examples above are only a few of the names in an expanding arena of established non-musical licensed characters lending their names to song.

More recent examples include Bart Simpson, the favored bad boy of animated television, who encouraged everyone to "Do the Bartman" in a rap record and video. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles also got into the act, going so far as to perform live with electric guitars blaring.

Children are the target audience for much of the musical material, though both Bart and the Chipmunks are a fun novelty item for adults as well.

The companies involved in combining licensing and music are adamant, however, that kids are increasingly more sophisticated and simply too smart to accept bad music no matter how popular the licensed character singing.

Disney characters, Sesame Street favorites and the Henson family of Muppets are featured on many educational tapes for children. Younger kids are also an audience for classic lullabyes. More recently, there has been a wave of records that are designed to entertain more than teach and give children an early start in music appreciation.

Disney, which has used Mickey Mouse as an orchestra conductor in such classics as "Fantasia," and other characters in animated musicals over the years, now has an established record division that operates independently. It signs on live artists that appeal to kids and last year introduced a live friend to sing with Minnie Mouse as part of an overall marketing effort for its Minnie & Me program.

"We really saw a need in the market for a positive role model for little girls and Minnie fit the bill," said Glen Ellen Brown, marketing director for Disney Consumer Products. The products in the Minnie & Me line encompass everything from bed linens to party goods as well as apparel and toys.

What Walt Disney Records did was expand on that friendship theme. It introduced Christa Larson, a 10-year-old girl to be the "me" in Minnie & Me. Larson and Minnie made a record, a video and toured the country's retail malls promoting the act.

Disney has also capitalized on one of its newer cast of characters, Sebastian the Crab, from its movie, "The Little Mermaid." Independent of the movie score, Sebastian (actually the voice of Samuel E. Wright) released an album of reggae classics, from Jimmy Cliff's "You Can Get It If You Really Want It," to Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds."

While this is part fun and games, it is also serious business. According to Amy Maslin, a spokeswoman for Disney Records, the Minnie & Me recording sold 250,000 units, while Sebastian's reggae romp has sold 300,000 units to date.

Robert Smith, head of marketing, Geffen Records, Los Angeles, reported the Simpsons tape sold 3 million records, and even made No. 1 on the British pop music charts.

With Disney, success is easily attributed to the familiarity of the characters. New also is the broader media outlets available for children's recordings. Maslin pointed out that new outlets for children's music--from its own Disney Channel to cable stations like Nickelodeon to all-kids hours on popular radio stations--create a larger audience for character music and more opportunity for the licensor to both promote and advertise.

"It's a growing market that has expanded beyond the traditional avenues for targeting kids such as Saturday morning cartoons," she said. "There is kids' programming all over the country and kids' radio is becoming a substantial part of many stations' programs."

Robert Smith, director of marketing at Geffen Records, noted that the success of Bart Simpson's musical debut was also helped by its popularity with adults. Adult music cable stations also showed the Bart tape periodically and it premiered at the tail end of one of "The Simpsons" programs last December.

For both Smith and Maslin, one of the differences in marketing a character is the lack of traditional media exposure via live performances and interviews. At the same time, a wider retail base is available for some of the products. Though Smith reported traditional music departments were by far the leaders in sales, the tape and CD were available in toy stores because of the character appeal.

In fact, for these types of novelty records they are often a better channel of distribution. The record may be an easier sale when consumers are already in a store that displays licensed merchandise extensively.

"The Simpsons was unusual in that it was marketed decidedly to an adult audience and as such did well at traditional outlets," Smith said.

As with other forms of licensing, classic characters live longer. Though Bart and his family have yet to prove their longevity, Smith anticipates "The Simpsons Sing the Blues" album will be a perennial gift item. It will be reintroduced in the fall in time for Christmas, following in the footsteps of another favored Christmas group, The Chipmunks.