Six60 don't need to do publicity to promote their New Zealand tour. Tickets to five of the shows sold out in days, if not minutes. Yet Marlon Gerbes is up early and has trudged across Auckland for this interview.
Perhaps he's the band member who has drawn the short straw. You'd never know it, though. He's more than happy to chat and we squeeze a raft of topics into our 40-odd minutes - their delight at the success of their recently released second album, its new soul-tinged sound and working with Grammy Award-winning artist and producer Printz Board.
But it's social media and the Six60 approach to self-promotion that really gets us talking. It's a big part of the groundswell that has turned these old uni mates into one of the country's most successful acts. "Social media is so key in what we do at the moment. Like this album we just released. Our label said we spent zero money on marketing. It was all done through social media," says Gerbes, who co-produced the album with Matiu Walters and Board.
Gerbes runs the Facebook page, which has 230,000 likes, and Chris Mac does Twitter, where they have 18,800 followers. They all take responsibility for Instagram. Gerbes says they treat them as individual platforms, which fans appreciate, and all three are incredibly time-consuming.
"It's a conversation and it's a long, long one that you have to keep up. It's not like you can do a random post that has nothing to do with the last post. It's a continuation and people get it and they follow it."
