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| Even when 'dead' Kim manages to pout |
One of the areas of PR that I would like to go into when I graduate is the non-profit and charity sectors (I'm also really interested in consumer and internal communications too, I just can't decide).
There are many inspiring campaigns in the non-profit/charity sectors, some of which are designed to shock/scare audiences into supporting a particular cause or organisation. Evoking emotions via a campaign, especially shock, is an area that I would like to explore further and a dissertation topic that I am swaying towards too.
Anyway, earlier today I was researching campaigns when I came across Digital Death, by Keep a Child Alive - an organisation that provides treatment and care to HIV/AIDS affected children and families in Africa and India.
The campaign includes various celebrities, such as the Kardashians, Lenny Kravitz, Lady Gaga, Alicia Keys and Usher all providing a 'Last Tweet and Testament', vowing to give up their Twitter and Facebook accounts, until enough money is raised to buy their digital lives back.
As social media plays such an important role in many people's lives today, and provides an accessible communication platform to many otherwise 'untouchable' celebrities, I thought this was a really unique and clever idea. People had no other choice but to donate, in order to find out what their favourite celebs were doing again and to regain a sense of connection with them.
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| Very convincing... |
It's a slightly older campaign, which ran in 2010, and was a little slow to take off. Maybe this was due to the high donation rate, or the unconvincing poses and pouting of the 'dead' celebs. However, I do think that the overall concept is an inspiring idea, and one, if it was done a little more convincingly may have had an even bigger impact and shocked plenty more people.
I can imagine fans of the celebrities would have hated to see their lifeless idols in coffins, and so would have been compelled to donate, but if you're going to fake death, then at least try and get into the spirit of things (excuse the pun).
On the positive though, the idea of buying back life highlights the how death is often so easily avoidable; if we spend less on indulging ourselves and more on helping others who need it. I often consider social media as an important part of daily life, but Digital Death emphasises the much more vital things, which the less-fortunate have little, or no, access to.
