Cyber Silence
So we all heard about how Kim Kardashian, Usher, Lady Gaga & co were committing digital suicide and going silent from December 1 until they raised $1 million to help the ‘Keep a Child Alive’ campaign for World Aids Day, right? Well yesterday the good news came through that the money had been raised and the celebrities have been resurrected and can tweet again! Happy Days! But not so happy was the length of time it took. A week into it, only 45% of the target had been raised and with stars like KK getting up to $10k a tweet to push promos, the celebs were getting antsy over it and had to call in a few favours from friends to meet the target. So was the campaign proof that social media has little impact on ‘the real world’ or was it a poor strategy from the start?
Here’s a blog post I wrote for the LOUD blog before the event, which examined just that:
Is your Twitter feed strangely quiet? Your Facebook newsfeed a little stagnant? If you follow or friend a few celebrities, you’re probably experiencing the effect of the “Digital Life Sacrifice”, an initiative of the ‘Keep a Child Alive’ Charity in line with World Aids Day, whereby a number of celebrities, including Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian and Justin Timberlake, have all pledged to stay off their social media accounts from 1 December until the charity raises $1 million.
To build awareness around the event, each of the stars have also filmed their “last tweet and testament” which will appear in ads, and will also feature them lying in coffins to represent their digital deaths.
Co-founder of Keep a Child Alive, Leigh Blake, sums up the campaign sentiment perfectly, “We’re trying to sort of make the remark: why do we care so much about the death of one celebrity as opposed to millions and millions of people dying”.
LOUD loves the idea of an unexpected twist on how we conventionally use social media and is very impressed by the amount of PR the stunt is generating but fears the impact of the campaign may get lost when it’s actually implemented.
For starters, many of the celebrities are not regular tweeters anyway and often go days without tweeting or updating their statuses so would their lack of presence really be noticed? As for those who are regular tweeters (we’re looking at you, Kardashian sisters), with tweets like “I’m proud of myself today…I ate so healthy!”, will people be rushing to pay for them to come back online?
So here’s a couple of ideas LOUD would add to the mix that we think would give it more impact:
- The celebrities have massive followings, with Gaga alone pulling 7.2 million people opting into her every word, so why not make use of this following and urge the celebs to only sacrifice any personal tweets/status updates until the target is met. Instead of telling us what they had for breakfast, they can fill our newsfeed with links to the donation page or the sms number to donate. This way they are still silenced but their followers can easily act. This will also give their followers items to retweet or reply to, increasing the reach of the messages.
- Tie the campaign into the existing social network infrastructure. Use Facebook Credits as a donation channel.
- Encourage the celebrities to build up momentum before the event, eg. By having a countdown to their “digital deaths” so that their absence will be more evident when it occurs.
While LOUD sees a lot of extra opportunity in this event, we are sure with such celebrity firepower behind it, will be a success and are eagerly awaiting the collective sigh of relief sure to occur when the target is met and we can once again know when Kim Kardashian is “Sooooo sleepy I just need a 7min nap!”
So what did you think of the campaign?
