Esmée Denters Case Study - Internet Promotion

Esmée Denters is a Dutch singer/songwriter who was discovered through the means of the internet video streaming site Youtube. Denters would perform cover versions of songs by, for example, justin Timberlake and Natasha Beddingfield and became extremely popular as people from all over the world stumbled over her versions, perhaps when searching the popular artists themselves. Youtube allows Celebrities (Record Labels) as well as the general public to post videos alongside each other for anyone to view. This form of advertising was very shrewd on Esmée’s part as she chose incredibly well known and well liked songs that were more likely to be searched and thus increase her own popularity. This lead to her discovery by Dutch media scouts and, the singer himself, Justin Timberlake.


Examples of websites that Denter’s record company broadcasts her through is:


• Social networking site’s (myspace, facebook, twitter etc)
• Website’s (official website/fan sites/ record company’s site)
• Last fm
• Spotify
• Youtube (VEVO a Youtube channel as well as Denters own official Youtube Channel)
etc.

This viral type of media (where one person recommends something to another) ultimately lead to Denters obtaining a record deal. This situation was a bonus for the managers/record company of Esmee too as she already had a fully formed fan base on Youtube, by simply recording herself singing at home on her webcam. A fairly cost effective way of promoting! Within nine months of posting, Denters video’s reached up to twenty one million hits, becoming the No.1 most subscribed to musician in the history of the popular video-sharing site and her channel now has 133 million views. This shows how effective viral media and the internet can be as it is a direct channel to potential fans from a huge number of countries. Many media institutes exploit this and consequently obtain their target audience and demographics as effectively as perhaps television has been. Technology and the internet has, however, generated a surge of new viral ‘celebrities’, causing stardom to be easier and some believe that because of this, real talent can sometimes be lost in all of this.