Spice Girls merchandise and sponsorship deals
The following year, they became involved in a prolific marketing phenomenon, leading to an unprecedented number of Spice Girls merchandise and sponsorship deals.
[1][2][3][4] With their name attached to numerous sponsors including Pepsi, Cadbury and Polaroid, and the official Spice Girls branding on hundreds of different product tie-ins,[5][6][7] they quickly became the most merchandised group in music history.
[22] In early 1997, the Spice Girls signed a multimillion-dollar endorsement deal with PepsiCo to launch the soft drink company's Generation Next campaign.
[25][26] Promotional giveaways included collectible drinking glasses and two limited edition music singles, "Step to Me" and "Move Over (Generation Next)".
[3] The Spice Girls' "Generation Next" campaign led to a record five percent gain in the cola market share for Pepsi in 1997[25][26] and the endorsement deal was extended in November 1997 for an additional £500,000.
[29] In a 2014 interview with BBC Radio 2, the group's longtime manager Simon Fuller claimed that Pepsi spent around $100 million on the Spice Girls' endorsement campaign.
A£1.8 million advertising campaign accompanied the Impulse Spice launch, including a television advert the group filmed for the product.
[43][44] In September 1997, British supermarket chain Asda signed a £1 million merchandising deal to launch a wide range of Spice Girls products for the 1997 Christmas season.
The range consisted of 10 chocolate countlines, assorted boxes and holiday confectioneries including Easter eggs, featuring the Spice Girls individually or as a group.
[58] Some analysts cautioned of a brand "overkill",[10][33][59] with The Independent's Paul McCann warning that the "endless exploitation of the band's name signals the beginning of the end for the Spice phenomenon.
"[33] At this point, the Spice Girls themselves had reportedly grown weary of the "endless" corporate obligations and fired their manager Simon Fuller.
[3] In early 1998, the Spice Girls signed a sponsorship deal for the European leg of their 1998 Spiceworld Tour with Italian scooter maker Aprilia.
Throughout this leg of the tour, commercials for their sponsors, including Revlon, Pepsi, Biore and Domino Sugar, were played on the large concert screens before the shows and during intermissions.
[66] Nevertheless, it opened up a whole new concert revenue stream, with music industry pundits predicting more acts would follow the Spice Girls' lead.
[69] Around the same time, toymaker Toymax introduced new lines of licensed Spice Girls dolls, toys, accessories and youth electronics.
[70] In November 1998, a new line of official Spice Girls bean bag dolls and collectibles were put on the market by Bravado International Group.
[80] The campaign included Spice Girls branded products in supermarkets to promote Walkers' Cheese & Onion flavouring, as well as a television advertisement starring the group that premiered during the 2019 Britain's Got Talent semi-finals.
He noted that the band "struck a chord at a time when corporate marketers had been searching for solid points of pop-cultural interface with pre-teen and young teen girls.
"[3] Marc Greengrass, account director for the advertising agency Gepetto, added: "They have also appeared at a time when there is a distinct lack of female heroines for this age group and [they] use a terrific message: total empowerment.
[3] Similarly, cosmetics brand Fabergé wanted to capitalise on the "girl power" trend and saw Impulse Spice as "a rare opportunity to appeal to the 13-plus age group".
[3] The group's distinctive personas (Ginger, Scary, Baby, Sporty and Posh) also bolstered their appeal to advertisers, allowing brands to personalise their products to each identity.
The group gained massive international exposure by putting their name on products that were already popular in a particular territory, such as Chupa Chup lollipops in Spain and Pepsi in Southeast Asia.
[87] The volume and nature of the product tie-ins and commercial sponsorships at the height of the Spice Girls phenomenon began to tarnish the band's image.
[28] During the summer of 1997, the group was criticised for "selling out" to worldwide brands, being accused of overexposure and signing too many sponsorship contracts with large corporate businesses.
[90] Commentators opined that the band's music seemed like an afterthought,[14] instead, Newsweek wrote, "the girls' main focus seems to be collecting huge fees for their advertising deals".
"[13] In a 2016 Vice op-ed, Tara Joshi acknowledged that "[a]s the Spice Girls’ reign went on, they seemed to become less of a musical entity and more and more of an overt marketing tool, with Pepsi, Walkers, Polaroid, Barbie and more scoring very lucrative deals with them".
