There has been an excessive amount of praise for Geese over the past few months, a strong sign that something isn’t quite right.
And indeed, accusations of them being an ‘industry plant’ (essentially, a band whose success was engineered from the ground up) have quickly followed.
The first certainty is that we are not dealing with an ‘industry plant’ in the strict sense of the term, given that Geese have been together since 2016 and had already released two albums that were well-received by many artists and industry insiders. The second certainty is that for the release of their third album (Getting Killed, 2025), they really stepped up their digital marketing efforts. The scandal, if you can call it that, stems from the fact that Geese built their reputation in the indie scene, where such moves are never particularly well-received.
Above all, given that aggressive marketing and the pursuit of advantages and favouritism have existed for as long as music has, the public has enjoyed acting as a jury, wondering to what extent such promotion is acceptable and when it crosses the line of ethics. And this is where we find a term that best describes the push Geese have received: ‘psyop’, meaning a targeted strategy to influence the public.
The band has enlisted a promotion agency that claims to “be able to generate views on anything”. The main strategy involves creating hundreds of Instagram and TikTok pages on various topics, then producing potentially viral videos with the songs to be promoted used as background music, essentially simulating a spontaneous discovery. To reinforce the strategy, they are accompanied by pages that appear to be run by the band’s fans, where concert videos and interviews are posted. As the icing on the cake, small-scale creators are hired to simulate spontaneous content: a sort of micro-influencer who, however, conveys more trust and sincerity.
Does this make a difference compared to spamming press releases and/or currying favour with journalists so they’ll talk about you? For the public, it seems so, especially if you come from the indie scene.
On the other hand, this push isn’t guaranteed to work if, at the end of the day, people don’t like your music. One of the founders of the aforementioned agency said he’d known and appreciated Geese since their first album. This opens up a contrasting perspective: Geese are so good that it would have been a shame not to introduce them to the wider public, and listeners have indeed responded clearly. No one accuses them of making bad music. Even Cillian Murphy says he’s obsessed with them (thanks to his son), extending that obsession to frontman Cameron Winter’s solo album.
The truth, as is almost always the case, probably lies somewhere in between. Geese are a band of undoubted talent and Cameron Winter is an excellent musician (praised even by Nick Cave). The hype surrounding them is probably exaggerated and has also contributed to shaping music critics’ judgements in an overly optimistic manner. This ends up creating a negative impression in the public eye, especially among those who discover them through the papers rather than through their headphones. The marketing strategies they’ve used are no more scandalous than many others employed for decades. They’re strategies tried by many other artists: it worked for Geese, and credit is also due to the band’s talent. This certainly gets on the nerves of those who try the same tactics without the same result, or those who legitimately despise this kind of marketing.
There is also the question of ‘how many other artists would have the same success with the same opportunities?’ Well, that’s the million-dollar question.
And it certainly wasn’t Geese who first brought it to mind.