Winning isn't everything — just ask country duo Joey+Rory.
The husband-and-wife team of singer Joey Martin and songwriter Rory Feek placed third on CMT's reality talent competition Can You Duet this summer. While they didn't win the grand prize — a recording contract with a major label — they got a record deal anyway.
Joey+Rory's debut CD The Life of a Song is due out Oct. 28 on Vanguard/Sugar Hill Records.
Fans can watch for Joey+Rory sooner than that, too, as the couple was recently named the new faces of online shopping giant Overstock.com's rebranding campaign. Previously slugged "It's all about the O," Overstock.com's new slogan is "At home with the O." The entire advertising campaign was built around the musicians, who starred in two commercials filmed at their Nashville-area farm and restaurant, Marcy Jo's Mealhouse.
The first commercial debuts nationally Oct. 1, and if Joey+Rory had won Can You Duet, it's possible the pair couldn't have participated in the campaign. Since millions of people are projected to see the commercials, third place shaped up to be a pretty nice place to land.
"It's been nice we didn't win because we've had so many great opportunities come around," Martin said. "It's all kind of worked out the way it's supposed to."
However, the couple said they "loved every minute" of their time on the show and happily acknowledge that Can You Duet paved the way to their current career status.
Alan Bunton, Overstock.com's creative director, discovered the duo on the show and was attracted to their wholesome, nurturing lifestyle.
"They just stood out," he said. "There was some kind of quality about them, the kind of values they have and how they live their lives, that really resonated with me. I thought, 'That's a terrific couple,' and I called my wife and showed them to her. Every time I saw them I felt more attracted to them. That was it." So when Bunton started writing a strategy for the company's rebranding campaign, he immediately thought of Joey+Rory. However, contacting them proved to be harder than just firing off an e-mail. The couple deleted two e-mails from Overstock.com thinking they were spam, and when Martin finally answered the third it was just a skeptical, half-hearted two-sentence reply. But when Feek got a call from CMT about an opportunity to be featured in Overstock.com's national advertising campaign, the couple took notice. And it's a good thing they did.
"I said to my assistant, 'If we don't make contact today I'll have to walk away and use someone else,' " Bunton said. "That was the day we got Rory's cell phone number. I called him and explained I had written a couple of commercials for him, and I read them to him."
One is a love story that mimics Joey+Rory's daily life. The second is set at Christmas and was filmed in Marcy Jo's Mealhouse with a clan of the restaurant's most loyal customers.
"We sort of documented our lifestyle," Feek said of the first commercial. "I wake up at 6 or so and feed all the animals, and then I come down to the restaurant and get to see her. Then I head into town and write songs during the day, and then we play music together at night. That was documented, and to them, they really thought that there's a part of everyone out there that would like to have a little bit of land and be really in love and happy and chasing a dream together."
As smoothly as filming went, Feek still had a couple of questions for the folks at Overstock.com.
Potential career impact"I asked them why they didn't just hire actors," he said. "They said because people know the difference, they know the truth and they want people to connect with the company and connect with us and that's done by telling the truth."
The impact the advertising campaign will have on Joey+Rory's career remains to be seen. But given the subdued climate of the music business, shrinking radio playlists and the fact that Overstock.com plans to add the couple's CD to its Web site, the duo is cautiously optimistic about the outcome. "It's very difficult," Feek said of the challenge of reaching people with their music. "There's no guarantee that any of that is going to reach people or connect with anyone. I think with a commercial like this, where we're sitting at our kitchen table singing to each other, I think the exposure is so enormous potentially that it eclipses whatever the normal model for releasing music is. And I think that's exciting. But we're not counting on anything.
"We want our music to be exposed and for people to discover it, but what people seem to pick up on even more is Joey and I, that we are in love and happy and chasing this dream together. For some reason, people seem to respond even more to any kind of positive vision and for us, that's bigger than music. If we can play that role, even subtly for people watching, that's exciting for us."
And Martin said they'd be lying if they didn't admit they weren't at least a little excited about seeing themselves on television.
"To us, everything is a God thing," she said. "Nothing is by accident, and we feel like he's been preparing us for this whole journey. We were in complete shock when this all came about. We're still in a little bit of shock to think that in a few weeks we're going to turn on the TV and see a commercial of us. That doesn't seem possible."
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