Elvis Shows Up in a Lot of TV Ads

Elvis is a hit again - on ads in England

Robert Guy Matthews Wall Street Journal Oct. 29, 2004 08:32 AM

LONDON - England has a new king.

Elvis Presley, the King of Rock 'n' Roll, has been putting in more public appearances than anyone in the royal family in Britain recently as a host of advertisers - from Internet services to deodorant makers to even the conservative Tory party - invoke his hip-shaking ways to stir up business.

Elvis, who died in 1977, never performed in concert here. He planted his blue suede shoes on British soil for only a few hours in 1960, at Scotland's Prestwick airport, during a layover on his return from military service in Germany. And, of course, the United Kingdom has plenty of its own crooners to idolize if it wants to be nostalgic, most notably the Beatles. advertisement

But it is Elvis's image that adorns television, radio and outdoor advertising spots here. On posters on double-decker buses and in the London Underground, Unilever's Sure deodorant digitally changed a photo of Elvis in a black shirt to add in a white deodorant stain under his arms. The AOL unit of Time Warner Inc. is using an Elvis impersonator in its new U.K. ads for its new service AOL 9.0.

And the Conservative Party, whose elderly and buttoned-down bedrock voters might have been just the types to be appalled by Elvis 40 years ago, last month unveiled the king's "A Little Less Conversation" as the theme song for its campaign for a national election expected next spring.

The tune, written for the 1968 Elvis movie "Live a Little, Love a Little" was remixed and released as a single in 2002, becoming a huge hit in Britain. It was adopted by the Conservatives to showcase the party's new theme of more action - and implicitly draw a contrast with Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party, which Conservatives criticize as being long on spin and short on results.

"Few people would expect the Tories to use an Elvis Presley song but one of the things that we wanted to do was add a little humor," says Charles Hendry, deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. The party considered numerous other songs from artists including the Beatles as well as patriotic tunes, he says, adding: "Elvis is a global icon now."

As icons go, he is also relatively cheap - a major reason why advertisers are so keen to use his image. U.K. marketers don't have to pay royalties to use digitally altered images of dead celebrities under British trademark laws, says Todd Morgan, director of media and creative development at Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc., the business entity created by the Estate of Elvis Presley/The Elvis Presley Trust, whose sole owner is the singer's daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. Advertisers in the U.S. must pay for such use, he says. And the company charges everyone, including the British, for using Elvis's recordings, negotiating the price depending on the song and how much is played, Morgan says. He declines to specify.

Elvis Presley Enterprises welcomes the advertising dollars. A few years ago, the company sent information to marketers alerting them that Elvis was available.

"We want to hear from ad agencies. We consider every proposal on its merit," Mr. Morgan says. On his home turf in the U.S., Elvis has appeared over the years in ads for Apple Computer's iMac, Toyota cars, Energizer batteries and Unilever's Lipton Tea. Advertisers who simply rely on Elvis impersonators, however, don't have to pay royalty fees. They also get the added element of camp humor.

In AOL's television commercials, a Chinese man dressed as Elvis looks up information about Elvis online before heading off to an Elvis convention. In the background, "Suspicious Minds" (1969) plays.

The ads, which appear just in the U.K., appeal to the British because Elvis was a star with humble, relatable roots, says Martin Cole, a planning partner at Grey Global Group's London unit, which created the Elvis ads for AOL. AOL paid for "Suspicious Minds," but didn't owe anything for the impersonator.

"We wouldn't have wanted Elvis even if we could have had him," says Cole. "He wouldn't have been right. We get all the fame of Elvis but are able to tell the story of an ordinary person." Associated British Foods PLC uses an Elvis impersonator in television ads for its Kingsmill bread. The U.K. bread maker uses fake footage of "Elvis" coming off the plane at Prestwick airport and then spins a tale that the singer secretly stayed behind in England to invent its bread. The spot also shows scenes of the impersonator in a 1960s kitchen baking bread.

J. Walter Thompson, the WPP Group ad agency that created the Kingsmill ad, auditioned dozens of Elvis impersonators. Small London ad firm CAKE cooked up some bad puns that it plans to use in upcoming print and online ads to play on Elvis's recordings: "Bake, Rattle and Roll" and "Hunka Hunka Burnin' Loaf." British pop-music charts frequently feature old songs, but Elvis's music, in particular, has shown a remarkable ability to stay popular in the U.K. Two years ago, after Nike Inc. used "A Little Less Conversation," remixed by artist JXL, during soccer's World Cup for its ads in 60 countries, the song was released as a single and shot to the top of the U.K. charts. That gave Elvis 18 No. 1 hits in Britain over the years and finally put him one ahead of the Beatles.

This month, the 50th-anniversary rerelease of Elvis's first single, "That's All Right," is No. 3 on charts here, behind singles from Usher and Britney Spears.

Some Beatles fans, seeking to find links between the two biggest-ever hitmakers in the U.K., note that the Beatles were fans of Elvis, traveling to meet him at his home in 1965. Last year, a museum exhibit of Elvis memorabilia claiming to be the largest outside the U.S. opened in - where else? - Liverpool.

"You'll find a lot of Beatles fans are Elvis fans," says Dave Bedford, a guide in Liverpool for Beatles tours who sings Elvis on his karaoke machine.

In London, avid Elvis fan Cathy Mathews frequently eats at Gracelands Palace, a restaurant where Paul Hyu, who stars in the AOL Elvis commercial, performs nearly every weekend.

The real Elvis "has been dead for decades, and here he is still making people happy," says Mathews. Still, after seeing Elvis ads, she isn't more inclined to eat Kingsmill bread or buy Sure deodorant. "That would just be silly, wouldn't it?"

Forbes.com Dead Celebrities Elvis Lives--In Merchandising, At Least Lisa DiCarlo, 10.28.04, 7:00 AM ET

When Elvis Presley died in August 1977, The Washington Post wrote, "Part of his attraction was that the '50s teenagers viewed him as epitomizing everything they thought their parents feared they would become--cocky, slick, brash, tough, black-leather-clad, motorcycle straddling, stiletto-shoed."

Those 1950s teenagers are now eligible for AARP membership, so the company responsible for selling his legacy must appeal to younger customers, er, fans. This year, revenue for Elvis Presley Enterprises, the for-profit business owned by the King's daughter Lisa, is flat at $40 million. While that's an astounding figure for a musician who has been dead for 27 years, growth would be nice. EPE's recent and forthcoming ventures show its efforts to expose a younger crowd to Elvis.

"We've been aware of the aging challenge since we opened Graceland in '82," says Jack Soden, president and chief executive of Memphis-based EPE.

It's hard to know the demographic of Elvis fans overall but Soden claims that half of the 600,000 annual visitors to Graceland are under 35. But Graceland is only one piece of the Elvis empire.

EPE and its first master licensee will launch a line of clothing and apparel in 2005. The line, designed by Paul Guez, the founder of Sasson Jeans, will be geared toward young, contemporary men and women. EPE has given CBS, a unit of Viacom the green light for two Elvis specials next year, one of which is a biopic. It authorized Broadway producer Jonathan Pollard to do All Shook Up, a musical based on Elvis' music, next year. This past summer, EPE let Miller Brewing feature an Elvis cover from Rolling Stone magazine on millions of beer cans.

"We want to introduce Elvis to new fans without reinventing him," says Soden.

One of the ways to introduce Elvis is to license his name and image. While only 2% of proposals lead to a licensing deal, there is no shortage of merchandise: EPE has over 100 licensees who invoke Elvis to sell everything from American Greetings cards to Zippo lighters.

David Neale, 55, a member of two European Elvis fan clubs, says the endless stream of sometimes cheesy merchandising cheapens the King's legacy. But Soden says it's a matter of survival.

"The fact is, if we don't participate, we'll cede the market to infringement because the demand [for Elvis merchandise] is there." He says that when EPE pulls back on its merchandising programs, it sees a corresponding increase in bootleg merchandise. EPE helped establish a "rights to publicity" statute in Tennessee, now being adopted elsewhere in the U.S., that give a person, entity or organization the right to all publicity surrounding a celebrity.

"I don't feel defensive about our licensing," he says, "because we risk being ripped off if we don't do it ourselves."

Sometimes EPE gets lucky, as when The Walt Disney Company wanted to use Elvis songs and Elvis' picture in the 2002 hit kiddie film Lilo & Stitch. In it, the extraterrestrial Stitch is a huge Elvis fan, and carries his picture. Disney paid an upfront licensing fee, but EPE didn't push for a slice of the film's profits. "If we started holding out for a cut of profits, they would have turned the girl into a Don Ho fan," says Soden of Lilo, the little Hawaiian girl character.

Fortune also smiled on the fashion runways recently. High-end design house Dolce & Gabbana held an Elvis-themed fashion show in Milan, attended by his ex-wife Priscilla, daughter Lisa and granddaughter Riley. Soden says such highbrow events help elevate the image, and that's important because "You don't have to go far to find some snob who thinks Elvis is a blue-collar phenomenon," he says.

Will EPE's efforts bring in a new, younger audience? Maybe. But the merchandising hoopla often drowns out the fact that Elvis was a musician. But while his music helped launch rock and roll, it isn't associated with so-called classic rock and isn't played on classic rock radio stations. Sirius Satellite Radio however, has launched an all-Elvis station.

At the end of the day, Elvis fans will buy whatever they can get their hands on. And that, after all, is the point of EPE. Says Shelby Singleton Jr., the president of Sun Entertainment Holding, whose Sun Records label discovered Elvis, "They're not a charity."