Onward Backstreet Soldiers!
Boys Draft Army of Besotted Teens to Cyberhype Upcoming CD
By Bruce Haring and Alex Pappademas
Friday , October 27 03:46 p.m.
The Backstreet Boys are marshalling a children's crusade in support of
their upcoming Black and Blue album, set to arrive on Nov. 21.
Thanks to an intensive push by the Culver City, Calif., marketing company M80 -- abetted by the band's Internet-savvy management group The Firm and an increasing awareness of the importance of online marketing on the part of the Boys' record label, Jive Records -- an online ''street team'' of 12,000 Backstreet fans has been assembled in anticipation of the album's launch.
The sheer size of that group represents a great leap forward for online marketing -- by comparison, when 'N Sync released No Strings Attached last spring, their volunteer Net army was less than half that number, and the album still wound up selling a record 2.4 million out of the box. And with Black and Blue's official release date still three weeks away, M80 estimates that the BSB street team could easily approach 20,000 members.
In this case, the term ''street team'' is somewhat misleading. The first street teams arose in the mid-'90s, when hip-hop labels like Loud Records started drafting crack staffs of professional cool kids to help build awareness for upcoming rap records in their own neighborhoods. Their backpacks overflowing with posters, stickers, snippet tapes, T-shirts and other assorted rap schwag, these foot soldiers saturated the urban market to a degree that traditional record-company promotion departments couldn't.
By contrast, the Backstreet Boys Official Online Street Team, or ''BSB-OOST,'' is essentially just a Net fan club with a mission. Lured by the promise of ''cool contests and awesome prizes,'' as well as insider bonuses like early glimpses of the album's artwork, 11,969 fans have subscribed to a newsletter distributed via the free mailing-list clearinghouse Egroups. Since early October, list members have received daily marching orders from M80. Part slumber party and part strategy session, the bulletins mix teen-pop-appropriate good cheer (''This is going to be SOOOOOOOOOO much fun, really one of the coolest online projects EVER'') with surprisingly grown-up talk about ''retail'' and ''spreading awareness.''
Drumming up sales by stoking the fan-club fires is, of course, nothing new. But the BSB-OOST initiative takes it one step further, aiming to convert teenyboppers into biz-savvy, hard-charging salespeople, often in language that wouldn't sound out-of-place at an Amway-rep confab.
''The article that is displayed on Backstreet.net...which reports 5 million pre-orders by music retailers is talking about orders for the album made by RECORD STORES... not by fans,'' one newsletter notes in a directive that could have come straight from the desk of Jive/Zomba CEO Clive Calder. ''We are going for pre-orders by FANS, not record stores. For our goals, it doesn't matter how many albums have been ordered by record stores. ALSO, pre-orders definitely DO count in the numbers for first week sales.''
Street-team members are also encouraged to talk up the album in chat rooms, newsgroups and Yahoo clubs; to post Backstreet banner ads on their own fan sites; to dissuade unscrupulous fans from downloading unauthorized copies of the record from Napster (because ''such practices are hurting not only this team's goals but also taking away from the guys themselves''); to wear black-and-blue clothes the day the album is released; and to ''VOTE VOTE VOTE'' for the album's first single, ''Shape of My Heart,'' on radio request lines and MTV's Total Request Live.
With the street team's help, ''Shape'' has been No. 1 on TRL since it premiered earlier this week. On Wednesday, when the video slipped to No. 2 on the countdown -- dethroned by Ricky Martin's ''She Bangs'' -- fans received the following reminder: ''As you may already know if you saw the show today, BSB was #2 on the TRL countdown. There are some big acts soon to be hitting the countdown, and it's important that we make an effort as a group to vote every day if we want to keep BSB #1... which we do!'' By Thursday, the video was back at No. 1.
BSB-OOST is a marketing department's dream -- an army of ruthless 14-year-olds working a record until their Skechers wear out. M80 president Dave Neupert says this online push could help the band set ''one of the biggest pre-order records ever, if not the biggest.''
''The key to this campaign,'' says Neupert, ''has been having management's involvement from day one. Typically, labels come to us and hire us, and management's always been kind of slow to come on board. In the Backstreet Boys case, the Firm built out internal resources that focus on the Internet, focus on marketing. I mean, they've kind of got a mini record label there.''
Naturally, viral marketing is only one element of a larger promotional effort. Retail is already lining up behind the record. Amazon.com and CDNow.com are committing to Harry Potter-style day-of-release delivery for all pre-orders. And the giant Wal-Mart chain has the biggest pre-order incentive of all: a special edition of the album containing an extra track, available only at the retailer's 2,500 outlets.
In addition, the day Black and Blue drops, approximately 2,100 Wal-Mart stores will host closed-circuit satellite broadcasts of a live performance by the Backstreet Boys. The performance -- which will reportedly feature the Boys performing an a cappella version of two old songs and two new ones -- will be archived and streamed for one week on Wal-Mart.com as part of that site's relaunch.
American Express is also part of the BSB mix. The company's new Cobalt Card, which allows minors age 16 and older who have a bank account to obtain a card for online purchases, has agreed to promote pre-orders by placing an undetermined amount of money in the accounts of cardholders who pre-order Black and Blue.
But if Nick, A.J. and the rest of the Boys shatter 'N Sync's first-week Soundscan record come November, it'll be thanks in no small part to M80's efforts. By turning superfans into evangelists, encouraging them to show their love by spreading the word, M80 has created a self-propagating feedback loop of buzz.
So far, the campaign has yet to officially go negative. ''We don't want the whole world outside of the Backstreet World to think that all we care about is breaking a record,'' one newsletter notes. But a desire on the part of Backstreet superfans to kick a certain other boy band's ass has certainly played a role.
During 'N Sync's successful online effort, M80's Jeff Semones says, ''The kids themselves started to challenge one another within the group, not to just buy one record or two records, but to buy three and four copies because they were so focused on beating the Backstreet Boys' first-week SoundScan record.''
And in the age of the platinum-shipping insta-blockbuster, with a seemingly endless string of teen-targeted smashes setting the yardstick ever higher, Jive and M80 can't afford not to nurture the same milestone mentality in Backstreet-land. Or as the inaugural BSB-OOST newsletter put it, ''It's a HUGE goal we have... but we can do it!!! The fun starts now.''