story of a girl

The big story of Super Bowl Sunday has now been replayed over and over and over again. No I’m not talking about the amazing helmet catch, that thunderous Brady sack, the rise of the second Manning brother, not even the 18 – 1 losing record of the Patriots. I’m talking about the other big story, the story of a girl who found her way.

Kina Grannis, a 22-year-old singer / songwriter, found her claim to fame as she appeared in her own 60-second commercial during Super Bowl Sunday. She won the “Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Challenge” which promised Super Bowl commercial time as well as a record deal with Interscope Records.

Now what’s so amazing about this? Well, aside from the fact that Kina will be my future wife (though she may not know it yet), is that she had done more than just write a song to win this contest. Grannis actually found a way to get more votes online; she was able to Digg out votes. She found a way to succeed.

The singer used some pretty smooth marketing skills to get this win. She captured the hearts and votes of the online community Digg.com. With the use of some viral marketing and a really catchy song, she persuaded this massive community to devote their loyalty to her.

Digg.com is a community-based-news-article-popularity website (now try saying that ten times fast). Digg users post news stories and these articles get promoted to the headline page through a user based ranking system; users “Digg” up articles that they like.

The Web 2.0 phenomena (yes I was able to stay awake when my professor talked about this) suggests that users have more control over the internet than they ever did before. It is now a consumer based platform. It’s consumers selling to other consumers (E-bay), users defining their own worlds (Wikepedia), viewers posting and picking their own amusement (YouTube) and readers posting and picking their own articles (Digg). It’s also communities of people sharing the same interests with no barriers of distance or censorship, and this is where the opportunity lies.

Kina Grannis (she has a beautiful smile too by the way), is a business woman! She’s an entrepreneur, whether she knew it or not. She pulled off some Trump-like business tactic and closed the deal! Grannis wrote a song about Digg that got dug by its enormous community of subscribers. They liked it and they voted for her. Not to mention the fact that this video was also found on YouTube and MySpace which added to her web popularity. Grannis did not merely settle for “hoping that people like her song.” Instead, she used her resources and the power of the web.

So what can we all learn from the girl with the beautiful voice? (Actually, her hair is really beautiful too.) Well I learned that we definitely need to take advantage of our resources. There are many different excuses on why you can or will fail, but you need to find the one way to succeed. There are always different paths we need to take to reach our goals. It may not always be blatantly laid out in front of you, but it’s there. We just need to make sure to keep our eyes open (just like the beautiful open eyes of Kina).

Kina is scheduled to play at the Hotel Café in Los Angeles on Feb. 17th. I, on the other hand, am waiting for her to play internationally (my restraining warrant only applies in the United States). I love you Kina! We’ll be together soon…

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