Dignity (album) - Marketing and Promotion

Marketing and Promotion

To promote the album's release, Duff "worked tirelessly with the whole Hollywood Records staff to market record." On the day of the album's release, April 3, MTV began airing the two-part documentary special, Hilary Duff: This Is Now. The documentary followed Duff as she prepared for the release of Dignity by attending photoshoots, interviews, wardrobe fittings, rehearsals and a trip to Europe. In addition, Duff hosted Total Request Live for the week of March 26, made several appearances at retail outlets and on television, and was given massive online coverage on MySpace and Yahoo!.

Accompanying Duff's new musical style, the record label began promoting her with a more mature image. Duff dyed her hair dark and "sexed-up" her image. According to Duff, she wanted to "try new things", but the image change "just happened. It is not like a conscious change. People think it is so different because they have watched me grow up but that is just what happens in life." Entertainment Weekly described Duff's new look as comprising "dark mane, dental veneers, luxe and vampy fashions". In mid-2007, concurrent to the preparation of the radio release of "Stranger", Duff was featured on the July covers of the magazines Us Weekly and Shape in a bikini, and on the August cover of Maxim accompanied by the declaration that she had gone "from the queen of teen to breakout sex symbol". The Associated Press wrote that Duff's more provocative image would help her singles to garner mainstream radio play. Guy Zapoleon, a radio consultant and former programmer for Top 40 radio, explained that "radio has a stigma about playing acts, considering them teen and preteen in their appeal", and that Duff's provocative image would "definitely have a positive effect on the attitude of programmers, who are mostly male, as Disney tries to mature her image". A bonus EP containing five bonus remixes was released exclusively to U.S. WalMart stores as a package with the album.