Marié Digby: Word of Mouth Marketing
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about Marié Digby:
A 24-year-old singer and guitarist named Marié Digby has been hailed as proof that the Internet is transforming the world of entertainment.
What her legions of fans don’t realize, however, is that Ms. Digby’s career demonstrates something else: that traditional media conglomerates are going to new lengths to take advantage of the Internet’s ability to generate word-of-mouth buzz.
Digby is the labels version of Jessica Rose.
The SMO/WOMM campaign is simple yet efficient. A MySpace profile, lots of YouTube videos (with unusually clean and favorable comments) and an official fan site with a .org domain name.
She sings covers of popular songs to generate traffic through searches for other artists. Like Mia Rose whose videos I like, Digby sings Nelly Furtado’s “Say it right” not because she likes it, but because it’s popular with the audience she is targeting.
Do you think her label paid the rights to use the song?
Anyway, she’s busted now. We know the whole thing is a setup. But even this may be part of the plan. More attention from the media means more links and more links means more visibility.
