Some of Hollywood's Biggest Stars Digitally Die

In hopes to raise money and awareness for World's AIDS day, some of Hollywood's most hottest stars "digitally died" on Wednesday. Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, and others agreed to not log into their social media sites until $1 million is raised for the fight against AIDS. You would think $1 million would be raised in no time, but on the second day of this campaign only about $190,000 has been donated (according to the Yahoo celebrity blog).

From a PR perspective this seems like a great idea. Why not have a bunch of popular celebrities with huge fan bases to get their fans to donate money in order to stay connected to them online all in support of a good cause? Obviously the campaign has some flaws or else the million dollars would be raised by now. Having all theses celebs with massive online presences not allowed to tweet or Facebook about the campaign while it is going on loses a ton of online marketing. Yes, the concept of the campaign itself has gained a lot of traditional media attention, but the media are not the ones who are going to donate money. The celebrities' fans are the people who need to be reached with this campaign, and the one of the best ways to reach them is through social media. This form of communication has been eliminated and that might be why the amount of money anticipated to be raised by now has not been raised.

On the Yahoo celebrity blog, the author suggested that whoever created this campaign should have made it to where there was a threat of the celebrities "digitally dying" if $1 million is not raised in a certain amount of time. I think that route might have gotten the more of the response people were looking for simply because the celebs could promote the campaign every day that it was going on, not just the days leading up to it.

All in all, getting famous people involved in raising money for a certain cause is usually somewhat effective. The campaigns just has to be developed and promoted in the right way for it to work the way it was intended. Kudos to all the stars to chose to participate in this campaign. Raising money and awareness for AIDS is an important cause that needs to be addressed on a regular basis. I think if the campaign was tweaked just a little bit, the goals that are set would be reached sooner rather than later.