Even With Tiffany as the Attraction, Are Malls Still Place to Market Music?

MCA Inc., which struck platinum in the nation’s shopping malls in 1987 with its celebrated Tiffany tour, returned to the malls Thursday, hoping to repeat that success with an even more ambitious campaign.

The entertainment giant’s newly formed Event Marketing Division even brought Tiffany along--not to perform, but just to help kick things off and maybe share a little of the magic that had worked for her.

The musical attraction this time around at Topanga Plaza was the Boys Club, a Minneapolis duo whose recording of “I Remember Holding You” recently hit the Top 10.

But the real “star” seems to be MCA itself.

The primary purpose of the “Magic of Hollywood” project--which will be visiting malls across the country through November--seems to be the hyping of the multi-faceted entertainment/recreation combine.

Mall patrons are given a chance to win MCA products at four arcade-type game booths, each devoted to another MCA enterprise: records, home video, Universal Pictures and Universal Studio Tours.

The Boys Club itself made the first of its two Thursday appearances about 4:15 p.m., drawing only lukewarm response from the estimated 300 to 500 people around the stage in one of the mall’s lower-level courtyards.

Despite the tepid response, Phil Rosenthal, vice president of MCA Event Marketing, considered the show a success.

“I think it’s actually a good balance,” said Rosenthal, who had also worked on the Tiffany tour, which turned the Norwalk teen-ager into a bona fide pop star whose debut album sold more than 4 million copies.

“We have the exhibits going all mall hours and the show seven times a weekend. From my experience, when you have an act like the Boys Club, word of mouth increases the attendance.”

Before the show, the duo was also confident that this was a good marketing move. “We’ll get to the grass-roots audience here, the people who buy the albums,” said the duo’s Gene Hunt, sitting in a dressing-room tent near the stage.

Isn’t the pair worried that they could be typecast as a just mall act?

Said the other half of the Boys Club, Joe Pasquale, “If that’s all people are going to have to say about us, I’d be worried anyway.”

Tiffany’s presence, too, raised a few questions. It’s clear why MCA would ask Tiffany to return to the mall for this event--the heavy representation of press and paparazzi attested to that.

What’s not so clear is why Tiffany--who has been trying to establish an image as someone who is growing up--would want to replant herself in teenland.

“It’s sort of hard to really know if you’re going into overkill (with mall appearances) . . . if people will just keep thinking of you as the ‘mall girl,’ ” Tiffany said before going on stage to be presented with a platinum album marking sales of more than 1 million copies of her second release “Hold an Old Friend’s Hand.”

The 17-year-old singer said she hopes to be viewed as maturing, and plans to further that image by getting involved with charity organizations. And yet she acknowledged that the mall culture is her culture. “I still do a lot of shopping. . . . I don’t feel uncomfortable in a mall.”

If building interest in its artists and products is what MCA hopes to get out of the “Magic of Hollywood” tour, mall merchants are hoping for some extra business.

But the ambitious undertaking didn’t seem to drive the Topanga crowd into spending frenzy. Mall businesses in the vicinity of the show reported little increase in trade. Only the Wherehouse record store, where the Boys Club signed autographs after the event, experienced any noteworthy commercial fallout.

Still, mall manager Vicki Conrad was pleased with the kickoff, noting that the crowd around the stage represented a healthy increase from a normal Thursday afternoon.

“They may not spend money today, but now they have an awareness of the mall and may come spend it in the future,” she said optimistically.

She also predicted that the show would draw much better as it continued through the weekend. The tour then moves to the Mainplace mall in Santa Ana on Friday and next Saturday and to the West Covina Fashion Plaza Feb. 10-12 before continuing with stops throughout the country.

LIVE ACTION: R.E.M. will be at the Forum on March 15, with Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians opening. Tickets on sale Sunday. . . . Also on sale Sunday is Cheap Trick at the Universal Amphitheatre on March 3. . . . Coming to the Roxy: Hothouse Flowers, Feb. 20 and 21 and Cowboy Junkies, March 8 and 9.