Anna Liza Bella (Home)

Alicia Keys’ Keep A Child Alive campaign has come up with an intriguing way to capitalize on celebrity for a good cause. A number of well-known personalities, such as Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian, Elijah Wood and Serena Williams are “dying” digital deaths — they will cease to communicate on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking platforms. Their profiles will not be revived until their fans succeed in donating over a million dollars to the charity, which helps provide medical care and support services for children and families dealing with HIV and AIDS in Africa and India.

Fans can text the first name of the celebrity they are mourning to 90999 and $10 is automatically donated to the cause. There are also $35 t-shirts with a bar code that can be scanned using a Stickybits or Wimo app on smart phones to donate, though this option seems somewhat clunky and roundabout.

My prediction is that the time is ripe for social media and cause marketing to come together, especially when the user doesn’t have to do anything that isn’t already part of their every day behavior. I am curious to see how quickly they hit their goal of $1 M, not a very high one given that Lady Gaga has over 7 million followers and counting. Of course, it does open up some celebs to the somewhat sad situation wherein none of their fans donate and they must spend the rest of their digital lives in a limbo between “life” and “death”. Oh how it will chafe to not be able to tweet such important and momentous messages like this one from Ryan Seacrest:

“Lunch time at idol. great food from RN74 brought in…Been hugging families all day and just realized I have body glitter all over my jacket”

Maybe it would be better for some to just donate a portion of their large salaries instead of exposing themselves to that kind of torture…