Dear Celebrities, Nobody Gives a Damn Whether You Tweet or Not
When I first heard that Alicia Keys and a bunch of other celebrities were giving up social media until they raise 1 million dollars for HIV/AIDS awareness, I thought it was a joke. The reality is no one of age gives a damn if celebrities tweet, facebook, you tube or whatever else they might be doing online. To decide to engage in a “digital death” that can only be revived if people donate money is silly on its face.
In order to inspire people to donate in this manner, they’d have to be “punished” by the “death.” But the reality is celebs leaving social media hurts no one but them. Kim Kardashian, who is also participating in the death, gets paid upwards of $10,000 to tweet about products. Her tweets (and I’m a fan btw) are either product placements or tweets to her sisters and her celebrity friends.
Lady GaGa, who I’m also a fan of, rarely ever tweets and when she does she’s either thanking her fans or promoting some charity or another.
On the bright side, at least I knew GaGa and Kim had twitter pages. These other people? I had no idea.
When it comes to PR campaigns, one of the first things you have to think of is the value of your product. In this case, Alicia Keys’ tweets aren’t providing enough value to her audience that they would clamour to spend money (IN A RECESSION) to get them back.
It’s no surprise that they’ve raised under 200K so far, and that bloggers have come up with better ways to run this campaign than the celebs and the company that started it.
From the Feminista Files:
I have a couple of issues with this. First, I detest the fact that these celebrities are acting as if not tweeting is a sacrifice. And that is what they are saying here – literally. I am willing to sacrifice my digital life for charity. Totally stupid especially since their power is in tweeting to their millions of followers. How is not tweeting to them a good idea?
And how arrogant and tone-deaf is that? To basically say, “Dontcha miss me? Buy me back.” J’adore that the answer was, “Actually we don’t. Stay dead.”
Over at The Wrap another good point is made about how important social media is to raising money. Which basically makes this campaign ASS BACKWARDS.
Another critical error — by keeping the celebrities off Twitter and Facebookduring the donation process, the campaign is losing an enormous amount of social media marketing — from the “dead” celebrities themselves. What they should’ve done was have the threat of their collective “digital death” build up while they were allowed to solicit donations from their 30 million-plus followers on Twitter and Facebook today. If fans didn’t meet the stated goal, then kill them off, one by one.
And on a final note, for this campaign, celebs took pictures in coffins to symbolize the death. And, quite frankly, that was just creepy. And how much money was spent on getting those pics photoshopped? Most of them look barely recognizable. A blank computer screen or Twitter fail whale wasn’t good enough?
Posted in Across the Web, Media Strategy, Social Media @ 5:53pm 
Celebrities, Fundraising, PR Campaigns
I don’t know of many campaigns that succeed by staying silent. Word-of-mouth is strong, and for a good reason. But calling attention to yourself my taking all your toys and leaving the sandbox hasn’t solved anything yet.
First time poster here. My thoughts on this ‘Digital Death’ campaign range somewhere between dumb and distasteful. The event organizers and celebs definitely overestimated the impact this type of non-campaign would make. I do wonder if the organizers thought the thousands would just pour in over a 24-hour period getting to a mil in no time.
The coffin shots – not a good look at all – but I did get a mild kick out of Kim K. managing to ‘werk it’ for this photo.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Bella Syk, Vanessa Nicole, AB, J Danielle , J Danielle and others. J Danielle said: New on Media Strut: Dear Celebrities: Nobody Gives a Damn If You Tweet or Not http://bit.ly/i0U14Z [...]
Welcome Vanessa! I love talking to people so comment any time. I really do believe that these celebs way overestimated their importance.
Overestimated their importance right along with our willingness to wholly give a Fuck.
I don’t have a FB account and haven’t been on Twitter much lately. But have any of these dead heads stated how much they’ve personally contributed to the cause? Or is dressing to the nines in a fake azz casket (*gag*) donation enough?
I believe the $10 minimum donation is the biggest problem and shows just how out of touch Hollywood is with us reg’la folks. Allow me to contribute what my pockets can afford. Or…*donation cricket$*
Love your site. This is the first time I’ve posted (probably because I never have anything profound to add) but I read regularly. Here’s my take on the digital death thing. When I originally joined Twitter, I added all these celebs hoping I’d gain insight into their lives. I recently unfollowed most celebs after realizing most of them don’t really have much to say unless they’re pubbing a new project or hawking janky debit cards. (I love Kim K too, btw). Instead, I added more regular folks who keep me entertained daily. I said all that to say, when they announced this digital death campaign, I didn’t have a s*** to give. They don’t say anything work a d*** anyway.
I did give $10 to the cause though. Even though the charity is run by the homewrecker I love to hate. Off topic? Oh.
Well thanks for visiting and commenting! Much appreciated. And I agree, celebs on social media = complete disappointment. But I guess they don’t know that!
As one of my twitter followers asked yesterday, does anyone want to take a guess at who donated the last $800K to bring back the celebs to ‘cyber-life’? At the rate they were going with regular folks’ money, you would not have heard a peep out of these people until Christmas Eve. My money is on the celebs involved in this undignified mess had to cough up the rest of the funds.
Right..a BILLIONAIRE donated the money. I still don’t understand why they all couldn’t contribute a million. I mean Ryan Seacrest just signed a MAJOR radio deal…he could have given them a million.
Vanessa, a billionaire named Stewart Rahr saved their asses. They all refer to him as Stewie Rah Rah.
J Danielle and Brownblaze,
Thanks for setting me straight on the 800 thousand (give or take) man. Do you think the campaign being panned on the interwebs had anything to do with it?