Volume 3, No. 15. August 8,2003
Soaking up stardom
He’s bigger
than Elvis ever was.
“That may be going too far,” said Ken Cormier, president and CEO of
Funtown/Splashtown in Saco, Maine. However, his advertising agent, David Despres
of CBC Creative Broadcast Concepts, thinks the Elvis comparison is apt. “He’s
just an enormous draw, bigger than life.” Scott Anderson, public relations
assistant manager at Paramount’s Carowinds in Charlotte, North Carolina,
said he “is just hot. He’s gone further than the Rugrats.” Anderson
may be too young to understand the Elvis comparison.
More to the point, Anderson is not too old to understand the SpongeBob SquarePants
phenomenon. This Nickelodeon cartoon character has become, as Despres said,
bigger than life. His appeal reaches a demographic that Elvis Presley never
marshaled, even after his initial fans grew old with him. When SpongeBob SquarePants
appears on the scene, little children stand in awe, pre-adolescents scamper
up to greet him like a best friend, hoodlum-looking teens shout “we love
you SpongeBob” and mean it, college-age adults rush to join the meet-and-greet
lines since, in campus dormitories the urbane sponge has a cult following, and
parents shove all the above out of the way to get their own pictures with Mr.
SquarePants.
“Tim Fisher said he loves to watch the (TV) show with his daughter,”
Nicole Koebrich, public relations operations manager for Paramount’s Great
America in Santa Clara, California, said of her park’s vice president and
general manager. “He said it’s the only show you can find that a 40-year-old
man and 8-year-old girl both like.”
Paramount’s Great America, like the other Paramount Parks in North America,
debuted a SpongeBob SquarePants 3-D move in its motion theater. Great America
also added a SpongeBob-themed ride to its new Nick Central children’s area,
and all the Paramount Parks include the character in its meet-and-greet stations.
“When he comes out, the line doubles,” Carowinds’ Anderson said.
“Everybody is waiting to see SpongeBob, and the times he appears are posted
so they come back to see him no matter where they are in the park,” Koebrich
said.
Despres coordinated a SpongeBob SquarePants character appearance at one of his
client parks, Santa’s Village in Jefferson, New Hampshire, on July 26.
“He was mobbed, it’s unbelievable,” he said. “The traffic
was unbelievable on Route 2, the main highway from Maine to New Hampshire. Three
parking lots (at Santa’s Village) were full by 9 o’clock in the morning.
Some people I’m aware of drove three hours just to get their picture taken
with SpongeBob.” Despres said basic advertising placed 10 days in advance
of SpongeBob’s appearance was “adequate to draw several thousand people
paying full price.” The character is scheduled to make a return appearance
at the park August 17.
Meanwhile, the Time-Warner cable company wanted to send SpongeBob SquarePants
to Funtown two weekends ago, but because of that park’s proximity to Santa’s
Village, Despres got the cable provider to send SpongeBob’s best friend,
Patrick Starfish. The devotion was no less. The park started getting calls a
week ahead of the Saturday appearance, and the day Patrick arrived, his fans
poured in from as far as 150 miles away. “We had a line 100 to 200 people
deep,” Despres said. “I’m glad we had two or three handlers because
we couldn’t keep the crowd off him. I personally took three wireless telephone
photos of teen-agers, 17-years old, and they were talking to this guy like he
was one of their peers.”
Two weeks ago, the Los Angeles Zoo in California brought out not the character
of SpongeBob, but his voice, Tom Kenny. One of the zoo’s docents is a friend
of the voice talent and knew he loved reading to children, so the zoo invited
him to take part in one of its regular storyreading sessions. Not advertised
in advance, Kenny’s appearance was announced only to patrons in the zoo
at the time, and “We had one of our larger turnouts,” said the zoo’s
Promotions Coordinator Gina Dartt. Kenny introduced himself with his SpongeBob
voice, then read several books using a variety of voices. Then he stuck around
to sign autographs, leading to something of a mob scene. “I had to pull
him away because one group of children tried to mob him,” Dartt said. “Some
people that worked here wanted autographs, too.”
What accounts for SpongeBob SquarePants phenomenal popularity? Koebrich said
the cartoon itself is not at all offensive so its safe for young children to
watch but with a clever sense of humor parents can appreciate. “Nickelodeon
did the right thing putting these characters on the road,” Despres said.
“They represent wholesome entertainment, but not on a big purple dinosaur
level. It was on an intellectual level.” One of his new clients, the Maine
Lobster Council, was trying to get Despres to work out a commercial featuring
SpongeBob SquarePants, but Despres pointed out that SpongeBob works at the Crusty
Crab diner selling crab burgers, not lobster fingers.
Cormier thinks its good marketing, likening the phenomenon to the Cabbage Patch
Dolls craze of the mid 1980s. “That’s power. That shows you what good
marketing can do,” he said. Cormier said he had no familiarity with Patrick
Starfish when his Funtown appearance was first announced, but “once I looked
into it I began to understand (SpongeBob) was popular with kids.” Does
he thoroughly understand the SpongeBob SquarePants appeal? “Not really.
But who am I to question success?”
THE LOOP is written and produced by Eric Minton, Minton Enterprises, LLC. To see more examples of Eric Minton's work and Minton Enterprises services, visit www.ericminton.com.
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