Did This TikTok Music Promo Backfire? 

she dropped the ball giving the album such a wordy name instead of going with the obvious choice and calling it Zepotha-- that way people searching for information on what the heck it is find her album organically

I think zepotha could have been great if instead of telling her followers to spam random peoples TikTok comments, Emily just told them to make their own zepotha vids trying to convince people it was a lost horror movie. nobody wants most of their comments being about some random thing they don’t know and not about the video itself. It’s just messy and annoying tbh but it is a genius way of marketing, I’ll give her that.

I can deal with a girl making a ripoff Goncharov to promote her music, but I do wish she hadn't encouraged people to comment in entirely unrelated tiktok comment sections. The videos pretending to have watched it are fun! Telling random people they look like a made up character when they aren't involved in the joke is annoying, at best.

goncharov walked so that zepotha could trip and fall down a cliff

what really bothered me about the trend aside from it being manufactured was that it was supposed to be on thirst traps and ended up being on people’s really serious posts? like i don’t think someone making a post about systemic inequality would really appreciate being told they look like a fake character from a fake movie for a funny joke

TikTok really said what if we took a fun, creative, and community-building idea and make it consumerist and not fun

I think the reason the tumblr one was so consistent was because tumblr builds off the original post, like replies and additions to the original post allowed anyone who saw it to see where it came from, while TikTok is kinda random and it’s harder to draw the connection to the original post

what confuses me the most is why didnt she name the album zepotha .. ? seems like that would help it get the most traction instead of "soundtrack for an 80s movie" which kind of seperates it from all the buzz she tried to create. also zepotha is just a much catchier title imo

Tumblr doesn't have much of an algorithm at all. I think the difference between Goncharov and Zepotha is that Tumblr has a very "yes and" type of culture, and TikTok is more about making your own version of something cool (which is why there are so many different posters)

honestly as someone who witnessed goncharov i found it not as fun, it feels very very corporate, like they thought that it would absolutely blow up and they would get a movie and their music would get huge, when goncharov was just a funny fake fandom for the fandom website it wasn’t supposed to be anything that would get money just a funny prank. in short zepotha bad because the creator accidentally made everyone annoyed, goncharov good because it was a funny prank only on tumblr which is way smaller and way more silly.

The issue with Zepotha vs Goncharov is that the content landscapes of TikTok and Tumblr vary by a huge amount. Tumblr is kuch better for fostering a joke, but that same kind of thing becomes a spam campaign instead on TikTok. Many content creators have done these TikTok spam campaigns before and they're always received very poorly. It was irresponsible to encourage spam, especially with the prior history of these things happening. It was incredibly annoying to see whole comment sections just filled with Zepotha instead of actually contributing to the conversations people were trying to have.

While I disagree with her tactic, her getting hacked and losing her content was not at all justified.

i twirl my hair and smash my wall when dev posts

My opinion is that it makes a lot of sense why Zepotha didn’t make it as far as Goncharov. Tumblr is literally an opinion and conversation based website, the point is to interact with people that have similar interests. Most people on tumblr are going there to interact w multiple fandoms. Artists, graphic designers, and writers all came together to create Goncharov because to them it was something they could genuinely work on and have YEARS to create. Tiktok is so fast paced and the whole thing of Zepotha was just to comment on other peoples posts, not really to create the actual movie (except for the few people who did more than comment lol). It’s pretty unfair to compare them lol.

I think the biggest difference between goncharov and zepotha is the promo part. being a musician is hard and there's thousands of people trying to go viral everyday, but you can't use a trope from a popular-ish internet phenomena that happened a few months ago for your promo and not expect people to hate it. it gives me brands trying to exploit memes on twitter or whatever. what makes this experiences fun - goncharov, you teleport? and even duet chains on tiktok - it's that they're communal experiences without a "and buy my thing please" at the end. just a silly string of random events that brought strangers together to do something fun. (and without spamming videos about serious topics with "you look like a character from zepotha")

It’s always a wonderful thing when something can create a kind of socially creative phenomenon but you can just know that this will pique the interest of a lot of people in marketing and advertising who will now attempt to make this go viral in the promotion of selling stuff which will be a extremely annoying

Zepotha was like Goncherov except not as well executed or fun

i saw a video of someone talking about their negative experiences as a trans person and all the comments were zepotha related which is so rude and insensitive imo

Honestly, once I found out that zepotha was fake, the jokes got old very quickly. I think that it’s cool that Jefferi came up with this idea, but I wish a bit more thought went into the execution. I didn’t even know that the Zepotha trend was linked to her music.

the first time i saw this trend was when i opened a comment section and the ENTIRE comments were filled with 'you look like ___ from zepotha!' and to me it felt like being in third grade and your friends have an inside joke you aren't apart of and they make you feel dumb for not knowing it except this is on a scale of MILLIONS of people knowing a joke you aren't apart of. it's harmless in theory but i feel like it was almost mean in a sense where the people who were genuinely confused and wanted to know what was happening in their comment sections didn't even get to know and they became the butt of the joke almost? i could be looking into it too much but the whole thing is just strange to me

As someone who was on tumblr as Goncharov was happening, I think tumblr is just much more suited for this type of organized meme. I remember scrolling and seeing a post about Goncharov and thinking oh how nice tumblr’s into this old movie now I guess and then I looked into it more and eventually realized it was a meme, but the way posts were structured was so real and fandom-like it was just a like scrolling through any other fandom tag lmao. That was only a day or so into Goncharov’s existence before the Google doc and the official script and all that but already it was so cohesive and realistic. Tiktok is just too algorithmic for a Goncharov to happen on it. I learned about Zepotha through people on Tumblr making fun of its disorganized nature and I think it’s not a big deal tbh, people are having fun so. I do think the commenting on random people’s videos about Zepotha is kind of annoying, and the fact that it isn’t real but people are saying it’s real can definitely stress people with certain mental disorders out (saying from experience, some people on tiktok just really don’t want to admit when somethings is a bit and it can be really stressful). Tumblr users almost always made sure to tag ‘unreality’ on Goncharov posts so people knew it was a meme

i think theb most important difference between tumblr and zepotha is the fact that the first one ACTUALLY had content warnings. and ppl didnt actually harrass eachother it was more of a big roleplay than a way to troll others

If Zepotha was an ARG or something it would have been more fun and not so strange for a marketing tactic as ARGs have been made to promote things before. Like, anything where the actual artist took some time to establish a lore. Even if its just like a fake movie plot description spreading on TikTok, like just something. Anything like that would've been fun. Now its just kinda meh where people are, at best, annoying, and at worst, spamming other creators.

I'm getting Goncharov flashbacks.

I feel like it wouldn’t have got a bunch of hate if Emily hadn’t told her followers to spam other peoples comment sessions cause at one point people were commenting on artist’s posts that had nothing to do with zepotha and then talking about zepotha in the comments. I am excited for the short film contest tho

as a neurodivergent Tumblr loser, it is my opinion that the reason Goncharov was so intricate, organized, and deep was not only because it was a smaller platform but because most Tumblr users (especially at that time) were neurodivergent and put a lot of time, effort, and obsession into it. (This isn't meant to be disrespectful, I was literally a part of this lol) I hope this makes sense. Also not to say that everyone who worked on Goncharov was neurodivergent or that people working on Zepotha aren't neurodivergent. Now I'm stressing about the tone of this comment, so please if you feel like this is wrong or offensive to anyone please tell me. (Edit- To clarify, I mean this as a contributor, not the only reason)

the bit rlly broke for me when i watched a TT of something actually incredibly serious & life altering & someone had the audacity to mention that the creator looked like a character from zepotha. she never should have asked a platform full of undeveloped teens & children to go essentially harass other creators on the platform. it will act like telephone & her command will spread loosely. the worst part is it didn’t even work, bc i haven’t heard anyone actually talking ab her music at all.

i think the big thing is a lot of ppl don't like being marketed to, especially when its done under a guise of inauthenticity. it's not manipulation, per se, but it can still give ppl that "i think i'm being tricked" ick

As soon as you started explaining what that Tiktok was about, I was like Tumblr did it first. And then I'm just sad at how badly this Tiktok bit was done when Goncharov was just a great and organic but shortlived fun that everyone was committed to just for the hell of it; not to promote anything with a 'mastermind' behind it.

When I heard Zepotha was just a music promo i was like “wow i hope dev covers this” so THANK YOU DEV

this trend will never top goncharov

I'm not on TikTok so I only heard about this through other social media. Did the artist actually contribute to the Zepotha thing beyond making the video suggesting spamming other people's videos with comments? Was she contributing to the lore surrounding it in any way? Because if not, she did the bare minimum of marketing her own music and tricked everyone that thought that it was a fun idea into doing the work for her. And I don't think that this is necessarily a good marketing strategy to begin with. I'd be annoyed if I was one of the people getting spammed with comments, and I'd feel kind of betrayed if I was part of the community that created the lore only to find out that it was all to market music that I'd never even heard of. I'd avoid listening to the music purely out of spite at that point.

The girl who said "Zepotha comes from a fundamentally destructive impulse" really did it for me. I mean this WHOLE saga screams it, but that literally made me say out loud "go the fuck outside."

When I saw the zepotha in the thumb-nail and got really excited for all of us to remember Zathura again

I’ll be honest I’m not really impressed with “her idea”. Sure it’s clever that she made it a marketing thing but she probably she just saw goncharov a few months ago and decided to just take that concept.

The most annoying thing about this and the Waffle House thing from January is how it usually drowns out the actual commenters because of course the Zepotha comments are all on the top of every comment section. That's a big reason people hate this marketing strategy. It's not well designed.

i really appreciate how kind your takes are. it’s so easy to make videos and go online and just shit on things. and with the internet i know my first reaction is to assume the worst but it’s so refreshing to hear your genuine enthusiasm of “this is a cool thing!” bc it made me check my negativity and be like yk what yeah it is a cool thing!

On marketing strategies, there is this rapper where I live that was about to launch his first album, it was centered around his fear of death and the topic of death in general, so he published an obituary on the papers the day before a show, and and on the day of the show they were having his funeral at the same place the gig was at, he had his crew in bloody shirts bring the casket in and after the crowd sang his songs and drank and some mourned, the dude came out of the casket and presented the album

11:44 i was there for goncharov and it was so much fun but at least on the side of tumblr I was on no one was really trying to make it believable or convince anybody, it was so elaborate because people like lore but it was very opt in like we were all playing pretend together

It may have spread pretty far. But has anyone actually listened to their music? Have they received any positive consequences? Because if there hasn’t been any foot traffic to their music since this attempted promotion, then no. This was not a good idea Edit: reading comments and they didn’t even name the album Zepotha? How do people find their music then after pumping out THAT specific word? Were they placing bets that all of their other TikToks posted after this would blow up?

The conversion rate to streams is bad because the music wasn't a big part of the bit. If the album was named as a soundtrack of the movie, and she made a connection of the bit with the soundtrack, it could have converted a lot better.

Having zepotha be so wild and different is so cool to see. There's so many neat ideas about it

The problem i find is the meme part of Zepotha. I didnt even understand it was a marketing strategy for her music until my friend told me, i didnt know the sound in the background was her music y'know. it became more about the meme and less about the music along the way. Its a genius idea just probably difficult to execute.

Off topic but I love how Dev is always logged in as Nick on everything

I think what's interesting and smart is looking on Spotify now a lot of people have made zepotha 'soundtracks' playlists and so Emily's songs get included on those which is wholesome her songs are now part of the lore of the movie

"tumblr's algorithm" the thing is, there is no algorithm, ur at the mercy of your mutuals. which is why goncharov getting so big was a surprise

im not on tiktok but when you were explaining the premise I was like GONCHAROV!!!!! I'm so glad you brought it up lol

i think this trend is pretty interesting bcuz i’m pretty gullible and thought it was real at first and was super intrigued, and for the first few days i saw occasional comments being like ‘you look like ! from zepotha!!’ and i thought it was cool! then it started FLOODING comment sections and it was like okay this is kinda too much

this is so funny bc of tumblrs same exact bit with Goncharov but like. it was a year ago and it was Only for the bit and they were oh so very dedicated to it. this time someone jus went hey ill just do that to promote my music LOL. it seriously sucks that someone hacked that artist though i cant imagine what id do

the same thing that happened to dev with tumblr happened to me with tiktok. i got on the extremely sad, mentally ill, and even suicidal ideation side of tiktok when i was at my lowest and had to delete the app.

I actually had no idea she was trying to promote her music. I knew about the trend from people commenting on tiktok videos but I hadn’t seen her original video and didn’t follow her or anything. I listened to two of her songs and the beat and lyrics are great but I think she needs like a more professional setting in order to help her with recording the songs, how her voice is pairing with the beat, and some practice in vocals. I’m impressed at how she was able to make a lot of songs and I wish her the very best.

i like the concept of zepotha, the music is really good but the comments annoy me lmao. i will go on a random video post and see EVERY comment be like “oh u look like __ from zepotha” and i’m like girl 💀💀💀 but wtv my op🤷‍♀️

All Zepotha needs in my opinion at this point is a "remake" considering how many remakes there are of 80s horror movies.

haven’t seen your take on it yet but just seeing zepotha in the thumbnail made me mentally recoil.

Emily has actually been promoting her song for what feels like ages, and thennnn she decided to do the zepotha thing because her regular tiktok promoting the song were not going viral. So it wasn't just a month

There's been so many dumb tik tok trends that's like the app's entire brand. I'm not sure why this one upsets people so much. Also I don't even think it's that dumb, it's just people having fun with something.

as someone who was on Tumblr during the zepotha stuff, I can tell you that people were NOT happy. many pointed out that it was unorganized with no set cast, vibe, or plot, and immediately caught on to the consumerist intentions. also a screenshot of a TikTok comment section circulated because TT users were claiming that TT created Goncharov, but it just became really popular on Tumblr

I honestly think that this zepotha thing for people who got introduced to it by the THOUSANDS of irrelevant comments under every other tik tok on their fyp came off as nothing but annoying. and while the people that made videos abt 'emily from zepotha' or whatever were more likely to check the album it was promoting out, the first group of people would probably just don't care/don't look at it out of principal. because my algorithm NEVER showed me ANY of the zepotha videos. I only saw the annoying comments and it was honestly embarassing. if it wasn't for dev's video, I would never in a million years know that it was promoting smth. I just thought of it as a very destructive and annoying gimmick, esp under the videos of ppl talking abt mental health or smth just as important. and now knowing that it was a promo, I still think of it as such. while I don't think it's emily's fault entirely and tik tok just did its thing and ran the bit to the grave (as tik tok usually does), it still came off as capitalistic corporate bs marketing strategy trying to rip-off smth else. which doesn't seem very effective to me or smth that will benefit her long-term. but ig we'll see.

I was craving a new video from you Dev so thank you!

Emily's marketing strategy WAS genius, and what you're point out in 20:40 I feel like helps her, the traction she gets is helpful cause it is a jump boost for her music, and she now has an audience that will support her. She also won't get all the mean people to her music because they're all mad about the meme and won't be able to find her music based off her music, they'd have to actually put effort into trying to "pit her downfall"

Zepotha sounds more like an 80s sci-fi film than an 80s horror film tbh

Just listened to 'Where are they now' and I can't wait to listen to the rest of her songs. I was just saying that I know it's not even September yet, but I super need people to post more spooky stuff. Thank you for making me aware of her, I'm stoked

i smile and kick my feet up when dev posts a new video

HEY DEV i just wanted to say i've been going through a really rough couple of days bc of a manic episode but, your music has been helping me soo much to get through each day while i'm trying to get back to college work, i love it SO much and this vid is a nice cherry on top of a long day. thanks for all you do

i didnt even know zepotha was an album.. i just thought it was an inside joke tiktok made........

even though zepotha wasn’t entirely successful, i think it sets an example of just how creative future marketing strategies on tiktok can be. marketing an album like this is genius and entirely unique, and hopefully zepotha will encourage future artists to come up with creative ways to market their music too.

The urge to make a 80s horror story inspired by this...

Ive been so excited for you making a video on it!

I dunno how I'm zapotha feel about this...

This video was fantastic. Your comedic content is great but the passion with which you talk about this is really a joy to watch, too!

Dev never never fails to spread my cheeks with each upload, filling me to the brim with happiness 😊

i had no idea it was a joke and it confused me so bad i really felt left out too 😭

I don’t use tiktok and I usually don’t have any idea about the topics of ur videos but i’m still gon watch em cuz i love ur content

okay but ur hair in this video is so good😭😭 girl ur so pretty

26 minutes?!?!?! We eatin good tonight yall 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

Should have titled the album “Zepotha: Original Score” to make it tie in to the movie idea.

“Wee woo who called the fun police am I right?” LITERALLY THO 🤣

I just got this video recommended after i saw u on some video with Nick and its so cute hearing how simarly you talk sometimes. Reminds me when I had a big group and we all had these ways of speaking that slowly rubbed off on each other and u could tell we were all friends 🥺 this made me nostalgic lol. Anyway, on to watch the actual video lol

Thank you dev for filling me in on trends on apps i dont use.❤ i love random internet drama😂

the only thing i dont like about zepotha is how the creator was looking to hire someone to make the movies plot and characters and set and to film the whole movie for ONLY 500 DOLLARS!?!?! that is insane

I can’t help but think of deidara from naruto when the girl was like zepotha is just being “distructive”, with deidara’s whole “art is an explosion”. Art can take many different forms, and one of those forms can be chaos.

I look forward to see what the “next TikTok” will be, like the next new form of content

for the streaming rate, i think she kind of missed the mark on actually using it to promote her song, i didn’t know it was song promotion for almost two weeks. the first time i heard the song and saw the title i actually thought another creator was so committed to the bit that they created a song to go along with the trend. as well as i think the whole bit got to too many people, there were far too many people in on the joke i almost never saw anyone who didn’t know what they were talking about so it made the whole thing a little less fun imo

I'm from Brazil and I just found out this isn't actually from here. Someone just randomly translated the original tik tok and it got huge here too

Intro was the most unhinged thirty seconds Ive ever seen

I dont think zepotha was that great of a marketing tactics because i didnt even know who emily was, i literally found through this video that it was to promote her music, and what are the odds that i clicked it, of it wasnt for that Zepotha was still going to be an annoying memes that's on tiktok. (And it annoying people put them off the whole thing a lot faster, I had no intentions on looking further into it because I thought it being about some person telling people to make up a fake 80s horror movie was all I needed to know, it didn't make me wanna learn more because I thought that was the "more", some white girl on tiktok made people do it. I believe it would worked better if she made a general plot and tell her viewers to tell people that " they look like Emily from zepotha" or something like that or "you look like Karen from zepotha she's played by Emily what ever her last name is", like association type shit put her name with the zepotha thing

i was listening to her for a bit before the whole zepotha thing started and i had a few friends msg me ab it without me knowing it was her music at first, it was cool being able to see her music reach to people i knew :)

it is cool to hear about this from an artist standpoint! as much as it annoyed me it’s nice to see such an optimistic take on this

I guess I have the unpopular opinion here but I thought the zepotha thing was really fun. It only “got old” to people because every internet trend gets old to people on TikTok after 2-3 days. Growing up on the internet I’ve witnessed our viral attention spans growing shorter and shorter year after year. A viral video for example used to be something you could reference for weeks even a year or two after and it would be funny. Now it would be considered an annoying TikTok sound run into the ground after 2-4 days. I think there’s a variety of reasons for this not all bad or hard to understand. Younger people are very cynical about fun little trends for better or worse and I think that’s going to change internet culture in a major way and sooner rather than later. I just hope we don’t totally lose our ability to find fun and whimsy in moments like this.

the marketing strategy has already been applied by big corporations !! :^) It happened with Finding Nemo, where they made a generation of kids obsessed with fish and wanting pet fish and THEN nemo came out. I think its the same thing as going "Haha 80s horror inside joke!" and using it to strike people's interests into 80s horror music

i have no idea who zepotha is is but excited for the video

I honestly can’t help but give her props for knowing what would go viral to give her music a solid chance, I honestly feel bad she lost her account

The goncharov main theme is so good. A Tumblr user made it for fun for the joke and it's on Spotify

i giggle, click my heels, then snap my own shins when dev uploads🤗🤗

I want another fake movie bit because it's just so much fun

so tiktok is trying to force their way into a Goncharov moment? what am i Zepotha think about this! 🤣🤣🤣🤣💀💀

Just finished the video, as someone who struggles with unreality this is the sort of stuff that made me delete tiktok. It really sucks to hear to just get off the app esp since that’s what I had to do since I miss out on a lot of jokes my friends make, which makes me feel even more removed from them. No one really thinks abt unreality when people do this, make stuff up and then double down it’s real and if was EVERYWHERE? God. I can’t even imagine. I guess sorry to be the fun police but I wish that this was something people discussed more and that the og creator had like…. Made a website or like a pre existing post that if people googled zero tha it would come up first letting people know what the deal is or something, I don’t know. Also I know it’s different because she’s indie, but like…. I hate being advertised to. I hate seeing ads everywhere and I don’t want someone’s free marketing in comments either. Idk, that’s a lesser gripe here I think for me.

The girl didn’t care if it was organized, the only purpose was to promote her music, and it did, so it worked perfectly tbh.

I think the reason that the actual songs didn’t get as popular from the trend is because the trend didn’t center them, if u stumbled upon something like a comment like this or a cosplay or whatever you might just assume you don’t know the movie or show or whatever and keep scrolling. To actually get to the song u have to look a bit into it

I love how nick and dev have the exact same thumbnails. I genuinely thought this was a greenisnotnick post for a sec