Celebrity Twitter Deaths Go Unnoticed

Buzz has been circulating about the major flop that resulted from this year's "Digital Death Buy Life AIDS Campaign" that involved the social media death of popular celebrities such as Alicia Keys, Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest, Justin Timberlake, Usher and Lady Gaga. The campaign's mission was to raise $1 million for the charity Keep A Child Alive by refusing to tweet until the money was raised.

However, the campaign fell incredibly short of its goal and has only raised $200,573. This embarrassing failure is contributed to various reasons according to an article from International Business Times.

Although the participating celebrities are incredibly popular on sites such as Twitter and Facebook, each having millions of followers and fans, the campaign did not account for the thousands of other celebrities that still actively used their social media sites, making the impact of absence less profound.

Additionally, the timing of the campaign was poorly executed. Although the campaign was scheduled around World AIDS Day, it also conflicted with Black Friday and the upcoming holiday season. Throughout the end of November and the month of December, users are utilizing social networking sites less frequently and are spending more time with family. Not only did issues surface with the lack of impact from the few celebrities' absences, the users the campaign was targeting were also largely absent from the sites making it difficult for awareness and donations to be raised.

Lastly, the publicity for the campaign was ineffective. Many of the celebrities failed to mention on their sites that they were participating in the campaign and that they would no longer be tweeting, therefore little to no buzz was generated about topic. Many twitter users were unaware that a campaign was even in effect and if your target audiences are unaware, then there has been a clear failure in audience communication.

Although this social media campaign for charity was not successful, there have been several others have generated a large amount of press and donations.

What are some suggestions you would offer to improve this campaign for the future? Let us know!