I’m not one who spends a lot of time spinning through pages of videos at YouTube but with it increasingly becoming the playground for marketing departments looking to use it as the launching pad for their next viral campaign for some so-called unknown it is less likely to be a place I will visit.

The thing about YouTube; and its greater success, is that it allowed true unknowns a platform from which if they hit the right mix could be an overnight success. Now what they did with that opportunity would be entirely up to them.

Going viral has become synonymous with having a YouTube hit and all that flows out from that. It is a marketing departments wet dream; and one that they have learned very quickly to game if the story behind Marie Digby meteoric rise to fame is any indication.

According to a report in today’s WSJ the so-called YouTube discovery of the newest singing sensation Marie Digby is far from a YouTube rags to riches story. In fact it is more a story of YouTube and its users being played for patsies in nothing less than a Hollywood Records popularity scam.

At first the public was lead to believe that Ms. Digby’s sudden fame and subsequent signing with Hollywood Records was due to being discovered on YouTube. The truth is much more a typical marketing move by old style marketing department. As it turns out Ms. Digby was signed 18 months before her so-called YouTube discovery and it was decided at hat point to follow the same path as LonelyGirl15; another famous YouTube marketing ploy.

I’m not denying that Ms. Digby may just be the next great singer songwriter and very deserving of any fame that comes her way. The problem I have is that now marketing departments have figured out a workable YouTube strategy for once again duping the public just how reliable is YouTube as a real platform for discovering new talent amongst the usual flotsam of banality found there.

I’m not surprised that this has happened; but now that it has YouTube has lost something of its coolness. It has become just another patsy for marketing departments to use and abuse.

Listening to: Blondie - Beautiful: The Remix Album - Fade Away & Radiate

Conversation Tags: YouTube, marketing, WSJ, Marie Digby