Most of the YouTube and media community have heard of her name. Most have heard her voice. Most have seen her unique style. But few have seen the show.
Susan Boyle was a contestant on the British talent show, Britain’s Got Talent. The show scours across Great Britain searching for ordinary people with extraordinary talents. Indeed Susan Boyle had talent, but the way the world found her was quite unique. After displaying her surprising talent on the show, video clips of her audition began to invade the Internet.
Her name began to appear all over the Internet, newspapers, television shows and into the dark corners of the web. And the catalyst for this surge of popularity? YouTube. She has accumulated over 100 million views alone. Here is a thought for you, she herself has more views on YouTube, than the show Britain’s Got Talent has of her episode. Which comes to my second thought.
Usually copyrighted material that shows up on YouTube, such as television shows, movies and other corporately owned material are forced to be taken off YouTube. But the producers of Britain’s Got Talent saw this YouTube phenomenon as an opportunity to expand their audience in a global scale. They allowed YouTube to continue distributing clips of their show to help promote the show. The episode after the show garnered record views clocking in at over 17 million viewers, which was 69% of all viewers for that time slot. Needless to say, YouTube played a key role to the success of that show.
We see this phenomenon all the time as companies “leak” videos onto the internet to help generate popularity and discussion on their product. When we view these video clips, we see them as nothing more than video clips. But the fact that it generates talk, interest and the fact that we are spending our time watching them proves that it works. This subtle marketing ploy shows the evolution of marketing and how it is adapting to the changing consumer.
