Warner 'Mil-Looney-um' To Trump 2000 Craze - Brief Article

Warner Bros. will put its event-staging prowess into hyperdrive for a millennium sendup-- dubbed Mil-Looney-um--that will stretch across myriad Time-Warner divisions. Subway, Kraft, Best Foods and Smuckers already are inked as promotional partners for a fourth quarter 1999 media and marketing blitz.

The program, focusing on the classic Looney Tunes characters, will capitalize on the anticipated wave of millennium fever next year and juice the studio's ancillary revenue streams without a concurrent feature film or video release based on Bugs, Daffy, et al.

"The challenge is to take an evergreen property with this much longevity and make it hot and current," said Jordan Sollit-to, vp-promotions and branded food, Warner Bros. Consumer Products. "We're going for a kind of anti-millennium marketing; where a lot of people will be ponderous, we'll be irreverent."

More packaged goods brands, plus a mass market retailer, carmaker and phone firm are expected in, all targeting demos far beyond the traditional cartoon-watching 2-11's. In keeping with the studio's cross-divisional strategy, the program will span Time-Warner's consumer products and studio stores, online, the WB and Cartoon networks, Six Flags theme parks and home video. All 147 studio stores will participate, with the flagship Times Square store (site of the New Year's balldrop celebration) likely serving as ground zero. The WB and Cartoon Network plan themed programming, stunts and interstitials through Q4, culminating with New Year's Day special events.

Mil-Looney-um will expand a strategy the studio initiated this fall around Marvin the Martian's 50th birthday, a staged event during a non-Looney Tunes movie year that drew in blue-chip sponsors. The studio's efforts to contemporize the Looney Tunes franchise got a major boost with the '96 animated/live-action Space Jam and its '97 video release.

Cartoon Network goes for the grrrls--and the boys--with an unconventional marketing tack for its November-launching original series, The Powerpuff Girls, linking with Nascar, Sports Illustrated for Kids and 250 movie theaters in 20 markets via Screen-vision. Marketers also plan spot TV buys, an outdoor campaign, ads in DC Comics, trailers on Warner Home Video releases, and various supporting stunts.

"The show is pink and purple and rainbows and sparkles, but the strategy is to focus on the action," said svp-marketing Craig McAnsh. "The girls are superheroes." For the Nov. 1 and 8 races of Nascar's Winston Cup circuit, the net's "wacky racing Ford Taurus" will be emblazoned with the animated show's sibling stars, Blossom, Buttercup and Bubbles, doe-eyed kindergartners whose motto is, "Saving the world ... before bedtime

COPYRIGHT 1998 BPI Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group