World Aids Day was on December 1 2010. Celebrities stopped their online presences . These photographs represent their digital deaths.
The concept is unique and evocative. The actual results however, have not been as impressive. According to PR Junkie, the campaign brought in less than $200,000 during the first week.
See the full article here. To give you a heads up, it’s quite harsh. Alan Pearcy who wrote the post had this to say:
Amid the current social media frenzy, it’s completely unfathomable to think how wrong this campaign went–just terribly, terribly wrong. Nauseatingly wrong. Someone should be fired wrong. Yes, that wrong.
Creative Just to Be Creative?
Even though the campaign is quite clever and different, and I do think the comments above are a little mean, I will agree with PR Junkie.
Creativity could have been used to have the celebrities ask their social media followers to contribute, instead of dying digitally. As of today, about $420,600 has been raised. The celebrities will not return to their social media profiles until the one million mark is reached. Read more in this article by USA Today.
I can’t imagine a fan wondering to themselves, “Wow, I didn’t see a tweet from Kim Kardashian today, something must be wrong.” Nor can I picture this sequence of actions:
1. Wondering why the tweets had stopped
2. Investigating the answer as to why the tweets stopped
3. Stumbling upon Buylife.org and deciding to make a donation.
Highly improbable. Direct requests from someone like Alicia Keys would have been more effective at getting people to donate.
But on a more positive note, I think there are many people like myself who are now aware of World Aids Day/Keep A Child Alive campaign because of the Digital Death event.
Much like with advertisement billboards, it is difficult to know what the numbers are behind this awareness.
In the world of communications, creativity cannot be left unbridled. Good ideas need to be aligned with direction and campaign objectives.
