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Sunday, 27 December, 2009 10:42 AM
Overstock.com Gets Real With
Joey + Rory (CMA)
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Photo
courtesy of Overstock.com
Joey
+ Rory’s tour bus with an Overstock.com wrap. |
| By
Bob Doerschuk |
| ©
2009 CMA Close Up News Service |
When Rory Feek, one-half
of the husband-and-wife duo Joey + Rory, asked www.Overstock.com
Creative Director Alan Bunton if his reason for inviting them to
serve as spokespersons for his company was that they’d won
top honors on CMT’s “Can You Duet” talent search
in 2008, the answer he got was a surprise.
“He said, ‘I
don’t really care if you’re famous or not,’”
Rory recalled. “‘What matters to me is that you’re
a married couple in love, chasing a dream, living in the country
with a little bit of land and a garden and some animals. All across
America, in every little town, deep inside, we all have those same
dreams, no matter where you’re from. To me, you represent
that America.’”
Rory and his wife Joey
Martin know that America well. The farmhouse, the cozy country restaurant
— Marcy Jo’s Mealhouse — that Joey runs with her
sister-in-law Marcy and stocks with homemade bread in tiny Pottsville,
Tenn., and the barn before which the husband and wife share a private
moment, all depicted on their Web site, are theirs in real life.
That, even more than the talent displayed on their Sugar Hill/Vanguard
Records debut, The Life of a Song, was what persuaded Bunton to
reach out to them.
Timing was important
too. The company was in the process of adapting “At Home with
the ‘O’” as the slogan for its new advertising
campaign when Bunton caught the duo on “Can You Duet.”
Within days he was at their farm, getting to know them, explaining
the mission of www.Overstock.com to serve as “an outlet mall
to the consumer via the Internet” and working out their arrangement
directly with Rory.
They began by shooting
a series of commercials. One titled “Love Song” captures
a typical day, with Rory phoning his wife from the porch of their
house to sing part of a song he’d just written for her; smiling,
she orders a gift guitar for him via www.Overstock.com while listening
to his performance. On “If Not for You,” targeted to
the Christmas season, we see the restaurant glistening with holiday
decorations and filled with friends, to whom they hand out gifts
ordered from the online retailer.
This partnership manifests
in other ways too. These have included an www.Overstock.com wrap
on their 1955 tour bus as well as a page at www.Overstock.com on
which viewers can play the commercials, read about and leave messages
for the duo and order CDs.
“We do the right
thing for our customers and our employees, simply because it’s
the right thing to do,” said Stormy Simon, Senior VP of Marketing
& Customer Care, www.Overstock.com. “And Joey + Rory live
the right way, not because anybody is watching but because it’s
the right thing to do. People know the difference between real and
not real, and these two wonderful people are the real deal.”
On the Web: www.JoeyandRory.com,
www.Overstock.com.
Photo
courtesy of Overstock.com
Joey
+ Rory film the “If Not For You” commercial for Overstock.com.
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