"Cercasi Scambisti" - The weirdness of the viral web and Ginny Vee

Cercasi Scambisti not the album of Ginny Vee

If you liven Rome (Roma) within the past two weeks you will have seen sign posts all over the web that read a simple statement "Cercasi Scambisti"  - Basically looking for people that swap.
Innocent? Maybe but it has a double meaning that has a sexual connotation about couples that swap. So intriguing and genius guerrilla marketing indeed.

They have been seen across the city center from Flaminia to Prati, along the Cristofo Colombo out to Ostia. Brightly colored but with no indication as to what they were advertising.

Cercasi Scambisti

It's been a viral advertising campaign that has literally been driving Rome mad with curiosity. And for Ginny Vee - she was just another person that was curious about the billboards and wondering what they were really advertising. That was until this weekend.
A fan post on twitter for some unknown reason linked Ginny Vee to the billboards and proclaimed that "This is the new album name for Ginny Vee's new album."

You can find the original tweet here @ginnyveefans
(It's not, it is actually for a car sharing app as revealed today)

This was driven either by a simple joke, or by the fact that the same week Ginny Vee did announce she was releasing a new album later in the year. Have the fans put 1 + 1 together and made 3 ? Maybe.
The credibility of the tweet is that Ginny lives between London and Ostia, and often drives past the billboards. So it has big credibility that in fact this could have been a Guerrilla advertising for her new album. (Although it is a little bit of a stretch that a performer that is big in UK, USA and the rest of Europe would give her album an Italian name).

However a site on the web broke the story FUN WEEK SITE and that got the attention of the Roman public and the rumor went viral across the web. Totally unknown to Ginny until today.

The story then appeared a few days later in another news site Dagospia which also started to question if Ginny Vee was the "genius" behind the stealth marketing. www.ginnyvee.com

Adding yet more fuel to the fire in the Ginny Vee conspiracy traveling across the net. It then re-entered twitter and became the subject of a number of posts across Facebook and other social media. With videos turning up on YouTube and a talk about "Was Ginny copying a similar advertising campaign run by singer Coez.

The internet has been abuzz with comments ranging from "At least we know what it is" to the anger of "Is that all it's about." But thousands of comments have passed across twitter and Facebook with uncertainty about the origin of the advertising with Ginny Vee being wrapped up in the middle of it.

The first thing that Ginny knew of the mystery was when a friend asked her if "Cercasi Scambisti" was the name of the new album and "Why had she chosen such a strange name?"

Ginny did some quick checking and found the mix up quite amusing. And was a little surprised.

"I'm not sure why anyone would think I'd use that name for an album. But it's quite funny, who knows maybe now that's what I will call my new album," commented Ginny as she was leaving for a TV show in Ukraine today.

There are several interesting lessons to be learned with the mystery of "Cercasi Scambisti".

The first is that rumors on the web get a life of their own very fast and rip across the web in a viral way.

The next is that Guerrilla Marketing works to a point unless it gets associated to someone else. With no brand identity the net is left to run rumors. The ad campaign is great, genius even, and behind it is a car sharing app. But they nearly had their car hijacked by the web. It's a fine line in marketing.

Corriera della sera

The weirder side of the web is if you trawl the comments on Facebook or Twitter with some fans having never even checked out who Ginny Vee is assuming she is a male trap artist, invented by the illuminati, or someone part of another major big company conspiracy. The album name itself was even explained as a counter culture blow to single people, in one long and rambling post.

Either way the mystery of the billboards is solved. It's not the new album by Ginny Vee (repeat NOT the name of the new album) .. but if you are curious about Ginny, you can download all her current and future music from her site www.ginnyvee.com and you can be one of the first to now about the real name of her new album that will be out this fall.

Ah the weirdness of the web and "Cercasi Scambisti".

#cercasiscambisti