As World Crumbles, Carly Simon's Marketers Revive Guessing Game
IN THE NAME OF 'SALES'
As World Crumbles, Carly Simon's Marketers Revive Guessing Game
DAVID GEFFEN'S WORTH about $4 billion, dates pretty college boys, buys $100 million paintings and tries semi-unsuccessfully to keep the world away from his Malibu beachfront property.
Over on the other coast, Carly Simon, who doesn't consider herself "not gay," has been living below the radar on Martha's Vineyard (who is this Martha anyway?).
Back before digitally-recorded history, when Divad was Carly's producer at Elektra Records, she recorded a song called You're So Vain which made her rich enough to buy the Eastern Seaboard. But it also generated a mystery.
The question: "Who is so vain?" has lasted for 38 years.
Among the possible other suspects: Cat Stevens, Mick Jagger, Kris Kristofferson and Warren Beatty.
The Sun, a British tabloid owned by everyone's favorite Minister of Truth, Rupert Murdoch, vainly attempted to put this story to bed yesterday. In a video attached to their story one imagines hearing the name "David" spoken quietly. In an update -- Huffington Post notes that "Warren" can be heard.
Simon has a new album due out March 1st and her very own video contest! "Be the filmmaker to create the first and only official concept video for You're So Vain. The Grand Prize winner will have their video premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival..."
Jackpot! Pretend to solve a long-standing mystery and then create even more controversy. This looks to be a tidily successful marketing ploy.
And if there's one thing we desperately need -- hours after one of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history hit Chile, on the heels of the catastrophe in Haiti, during the greatest economic meltdown in the history of the planet earth -- it's tidily successful marketing ploys.
