The Ethics of Guerilla Marketing

This article, about a singer named Marié Digby, caught my attention. It appeared in the Wall Street Journal last week. One has to wonder about the ethics of such marketing tactics, in which a young woman presents herself on YouTube as a complete amateur, while in fact, she has been working with a large media company for some time. The record company helps create quite a stir on the web about this supposed amateur sensation. Then, the firm announces the signing of this young YouTube phenom, without making it clear that they had been supporting her rise in on-line popularity all along.