By Earl K. Sneed
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 7/24/23 –
It’s a match that could prove to be made in harmony.
Last week, during this year’s Comic-Con International: San Diego, original virtual pet site Neopets made a major announcement. Enlisting Grammy-winning singer John Legend to assist with an effort to bring online gamers back together, the Neopets team announced the EGOT winner as its new brand ambassador. During a Neopets Era Party, Legend first shared news of the partnership with attendees at the event via a video message. The All of Me singer also shared the video to his social media accounts, acknowledging both his and his family’s excitement to be joining the Neopets team.
“Hey, everybody. I’m excited to announce that I’m the new brand ambassador for Neopets,” Legend proclaimed in the video post on social media. “You know the game. It’s a classic pet game, and it’s long been a favorite in our house. And I can’t wait to share the joy and nostalgia with all of you. So, stay tuned. We’ll have some amazing adventures together.”
As a parent of four alongside wife Chrissy Teigen, Legend and his interest in Neopets no doubt extend down to his children. According to Neopets, Legend will be working alongside the company’s leadership for social announcements and other ambassador activities. Neopets launched a new website on July 20, and the company has committed to updating over 50 flash games on the site during the next week. The company also intends to foster community groups of online gamers with the goal of bringing Neopets back to prominence. 
Neopets first launched in 1999 and quickly turned into an internet phenomenon. Now, following a change in leadership and a site relaunch, the Neopets team looks to return to its glory days. News of Legend’s addition to the company appears to be a glimpse of what’s to come for Neopets under the direction of new CEO Dominic Law, who intends to bring the brand back to prominence through games, merchandise and an online community.
“There are multiple public aspects of why we think John Legend is like a perfect fit for our brand,” Law explained in an exclusive interview with The Hollywood Times. “One level is that public[ly] John Legend is for demographics. The U.S. is kind of like [for] the millennial; a little bit more like a female-oriented fan base. It actually overlaps quite nicely with the Neopets base. As you may know, Neopets has been around like 23 years, and most of our lapsed users who played us [initially] played us from the early 2000s or until like 2010. …. A lot of those users have grown up into becoming the millennials. And that, in terms of the demographics, it lines up kind of perfect[ly] with John Legend’s core fan base. On that service, that’s kinda like good synergy. And secondly, Neopets has always been about embracing community creativity. It’s like a core part of the DNA of the game, where we have a lot of users contributing to a lot of the captioning contests and the history of Neopets. John Legend definitely represents that creativity from a music standpoint, as like a music creator but also like an artist, in general.
“Also, John Legend and his family, they’re known for [being] pet lovers. I mean, they have a lot of dogs. They’re very public about it, and like they’re very caring. And in that sense, lining up with Neopets that’s like a pet game is another facet where it matches up perfectly. In John Legend’s announcement, he mentioned that Neopets has been a game that they’ve played in the family. That adds to how much he understands the brand, understands the IP and that he can be kind of like a master of representation of the Neopets IP, in general. … We’re going to release more details. To be honest, we’re ironing out what exactly we can do together. There have been talks, for example, on whether we’re doing like a virtual concert, or it could be like we create some content together. There’s a lot of things that we are very excited about discussing and finalizing, but we’ll definity have a lot more planned out. I definitely want to hone in on the creativity part and have like an interest in collaboration, instead of just having like a new post here and there to promote the game. So, it will be a more public, integrated pivotal moment for our Neopets brand. Also, we are planning for having a Neopets reference in his songs, engaging a lot of our lapsed users. Having John Legend part of this journey is like what excites us the most and just collaboration.
