Last week, in a spectacular collision of pretty things and pretty boys, Nicole by OPI announced a partnership guaranteed to make little girls everywhere swoon: Justin Bieber, the ubiquitous pop star and budding teen tycoon, will be launching a glittering line of nail polish. Called One Less Lonely Girl after one of his bigger hits, Bieber's six-colour collection will be available at Wal-Mart in December, just in time for Christmas stockings. More shades are slated for release in the new year.
Bieber overload aside, it's brilliant marketing, although some may be scratching their heads: A boy selling girl stuff? True, it might be unusual under normal circumstances, but Bieber isn't just any boy. Although his image is cuddly and non-threatening, his fame is increasingly all-powerful. From day one, he has been a viral juggernaut, exploding to fame via YouTube and Twitter. Now, his willingness to slap his stamp on everything from hoodies to stuffed toys seems to be dragging the continent out of its recession, one branded teddy bear at a time.
But it isn't just products the Bieb is used to shill. To encourage young Americans to vote in the upcoming midterm elections, the non-profit organization Campus Progress cites him in a video called Vote in 2010: Do It for Bieber - even though he's 16 and Canadian. His ability to win over even college-age girls (and perhaps a few smitten boys?) apparently knows no bounds, making him a marketer's dream.
Although she acknowledges Bieber's uniqueness, Suzi Weiss-Fischmann, OPI's executive vice-president and artistic director, says that males marketing female products isn't anything new: "I think men and boys cross over. Michael Jordan has a partnership with Nike shoes for boys and girls." She also cites Antonio Banderas, who peddles eight scents, two of which are women's.
Those comparisons, of course, aren't entirely applicable to Bieber. In Jordan's case, runners are gender-neutral. In the case of Banderas, the opposite sex is often used in fragrance marketing to both tempt and inspire. Weiss-Fischmann is right, however, that the Bieb is the latest in a select line of male performers, largely from the pop world, to engage in cross-gender promotion. A friend, who shall remain nameless, says she spent thousands of dollars on New Kids on the Block merchandise when she was a young teen. I have no idea where she got that kind of cash - I obviously wasn't babysitting for the right people - but she wasn't alone. In 1991, Forbes named the New Kids the highest-paid entertainers of the year, beating out Michael Jackson and Madonna. They did so not by singing and dancing better, but by earning an estimated $400-million through merchandising.
"To me, most of our merchandising was kind of silly," New Kid Jordan Knight told MSNBC in 2008. "There were marbles, furry pink slippers, funny dolls that had weird hairdos and looked nothing like us." It sounds like the kind of merch that Bieber offers through his online store, where fans can pick up items such as jewellery, pillows and rhinestone-studded Christmas ornaments. Is nail polish a stretch when he's also got a line of dolls? In that light, the One Less Lonely Girl line has a satisfying sort of aptness.
In any case, forget the New Kids or 'NSYNC when it comes to marketing precursors: The mini-moguls who hold the greatest relevance for Bieber may be the Olsen twins, who parlayed their 15 minutes of fame as baby sitcom sensations into a respectable fashion empire encompassing three separate clothing lines. Whether they can act is beside the point. They can sell. And do so - a lot.
Hear that, Biebs? When the bigger kids pick on you, you can cry into your piles of money. Nail polish, they snicker? It seems like you know exactly what you're doing.