Kim Kardashian and other celebrities stopped tweeting for the sake of a charitable cause; the big surprise was that few prospective donors actually cared.
I want to give to charities and help people in need, just like the next person. But would it inspire me to support Keep-a-Child-Alive, knowing that I’d have to live without tweets from Kim and Khloe Kardashian?
A total of 18 celebrities sacrificed their “digital lives” for charity last week, vowing to stop updating their Twitter and Facebook feeds and to resume when the campaign reached $1 million. It would have cost the celebrities’ 35 million combined fans less than 3 cents each to buy back the “digital lives” of their idols and have them tweeting again.
Six days into the campaign, donations were still under $300,000. A few of the celebrities became impatient; some, like Usher, gave up and started tweeting. Ultimately, Stewart Bahr, billionaire and longtime supporter of causes to support the prevention of AIDS, was recruited to contribute $500,000 to help to meet the goal.
In recent years, I’ve usually been bullish on these campaigns that were conjured up by public charities and their Web 2.0 agency partners. American Red Cross and mGive redefined fundraising after the tragic earthquake in Haiti. Through social media outlets, charitable giving broke records after the Haiti disaster. I watched in astonishment as every organization, celebrity, man, woman and child (except FEMA and the Federal government) mobilized in hours to generate donations for victims in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. (In 2004, the Indian Ocean earthquake and subsequent tsunami was just a year before Katrina, but I haven’t been able to find nearly as much data online about the success of those fund-raising campaigns.)
When I wrote 2 weeks ago about the campaign for Keep-a-Child-Alive that was designed around World Aids Day on December 1, I struggled to understand how donors would respond successfully. Don’t get me wrong — it was a novel idea. Who would not want a dozen or more red-hot celebrities like Ryan Seacrest, Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Serena Williams and Alicia Keys in print advertisements, vowing to stop their online presence for the sake of a good cause? But this campaign teetered on being a pure gimmick, betraying an honest, authentic representation of what the original goal was all about. The best marketing never underestimates the intelligence of its defined audience. By attempting to be clever and deliver promotional value back to its celebrity participants, this campaign jumped the track of the very purpose it was meant to support.
Putting the Fun Back into Fundraising
Those print advertisements didn’t look like PSA’s. How much did the charity, co-founded by Alicia Keys, pay for the media space in order to promote the campaign? I couldn’t imagine a prospective donor finding the necessary inspiration or the incentive to even take action. Donating a dollar for a good cause to the supermarket cashier doesn’t require work or time from me; it just requires my dollar. On the other hand, this would take people’s time and attention, and the only benefit was being able to receive more unsolicited propaganda from “push marketing” celebrity machines like the excess-minded Kardashians.
It helps when nonprofits tie a campaign back into their mission. It supports fund-raising when we are able to see a humble cause brought to life, not when we are reminded of unbridled consumption, jet-setting style, extravagance and the promotion of globally popular celebrity brands. The text campaigns for Haiti and Katrina were highly effective because there was a clear need and because those disasters were fresh in our minds, brought to life by hundreds of media outlets broadcasting the victims’ strife each day. Over $300 Billion was given to charitable causes worldwide last year, so philanthropy is not something that we are short on, as the human race goes.
Increasingly, we see media as the machine that feeds the propaganda and marketing messages of savvy celebrities plying their wares — themselves, or their name-branded products in some cases, or both. Interviews on talk shows, Facebook fan pages, Blog posts, Tweets — almost nothing is done for the pure sake of enlightenment, altruism, or knowledge sharing. We live in an entertainment culture where media channels are conduits to advance the interests of celebrity brands or the content they make and sell. Finding inspiration and being reminded about the importance of charitable giving or those in need hardly feels at home in this context.
In fact, Serena Williams inadvertently defined the campaign’s biggest challenge in her last tweet before the “digital death” began: “It means no more news about me winning more Grand Slams, selling books, winning gold medals, owning AMAZING football teams or pioneering fashion until we raise some serious cash.”
Now I ask you, can we live without that, and would the fear of losing it drive you to go online and donate your hard-earned dollars?
I didn’t think so.
Celebrity Digital Death: Why Hasn’t It Been More Successful?
Digital Death: Celeb Twitter Quitters Flunk Test
Tweet, Tweet, Ka-Ching: Twitter is Changing the Way Nonprofits Make the Ask
Twitter Death: Can it be true that no-one wants Kardashian, Keys and Gaga back?