Today at Mashable’s Social Good Summit, Susan Smith Ellis, CEO of RED, took to the stage to announce the organization’s next goal: To use social media to help ensure that no children is born with HIV/AIDS by 2015. RED has already successfully employed social media to get its message across. As Ellis points out, the anti-AIDS organization doesn’t exactly have a high marketing budget, so it “requires a high level of engagement” to raise awareness. To do so, they strive to humanize the cause by telling stories. “Social media will be the engine of our success,” she says.
The most recent effort was The Lazarus Effect, an HBO documentary about the effect ARVs can have on people with HIV/AIDS. The film was directed by Lance Bangs and executive produced by Ellis and Spike Jonze. You can now watch the documentary on YouTube. According to Ellis, the film has been viewed by more than one million people since it debuted in May. The film was also featured on RED’s iPad app [iTunes link]. In case you haven’t seen it, we’re embedding the documentary below.
Check it out and keep an eye on RED to see what efforts are on the horizon when it comes to meeting its next goal. RED, in partnership with Mashable, also announced the first annual Social Good Day, which takes place on September 23.
Ahem. Do we really think that social media can do this? Stopping the transfer of a disease that is primarily driven by poor-to-no use of adequate sexual contraception requires direct and explicit behavioural change. Whilst Social Media (in theory) could drive a very high level of awareness in an extremely short time (for minimal cost) – is it really going change behaviours if the very people who RED are interested in….. aren’t even in the channel?
How are they going to be involved in the campaign?
The absolute money shot with Social Media is creating ongoing, timely and relevant dialogue. Where’s the dialogue if a key party can’t even speak? Perhaps I’m being a little obtuse and not considering the wider campaign and how Social Media might sit in context, but my intial instinct thinks this is a massively short sighted strategy.
Wonderfully actionable or poorly conceived? What do you think? Two maps below might shed some insight on my initial reaction..
The Old Spice campaign that rocked our worlds over summer was truly great; not only because of its clever use of digital to spread like wildfire but also because it was a genuinely funny and well executed piece of advertising that garnered fans far and wide…. It even passed the mum test.
This it seems is an official successor from Old Spice and well, oh my – I don’t really know why they had to release this. It’s not very good.
I really don’t know why Wieden and Kennedy decided to run with this, presumably a zealous client wanting more of the pie. Maybe it worked in tests, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a let down and I can’t help but feel disappointed.
What do you think? A worthwhile successor or cheap imitation?
It doesn’t get much more beautiful than this. Something I really notice more when bubbles are this big is how they burst – seems a lot slower than you’d think..
Ah, old times. An era of no-nonsense, straight to the point and PERSUASIVE advertising. Social media, blah, co-creation, blah, democratised information, blah who needs that drivel when you’ve got corkers like these to spread goodness about your brand.
Slick, sassy and effortlessly cool, ‘True Originals’ is a somewhat mysterious campaign from London based creative marketing agency ‘Think Espionage’ . The videos follow a Prada adorned ‘Euro-man’ across the world in pursuit of the world’s finest bartenders. Each one seems to be an expert in their field and able to create some seriously awesome cocktails with of course…Bacardi. Thankfully you never get to see a single bottle though, the videos are all refreshingly unbranded which instantly makes me nod in smug approval. Kudos to Bacardi for signing that off.
So what’s it all about? Well, following on from the experiential Bacardi bespoke platform they rolled out a few years ago, this campaign seems to be aiming to bring to life the experience of Bacardi – but with all the benefits of a digital platform. Whilst Bacardi Bespoke was a very cool idea, its only problem would be a lack of reach. I am sure they intended to target ‘influencers’ but anyone who is anyone should be wary of nonsense like that. This campaign seems to be largely rooted in Facebook and with no dedicated website – which is really interesting. These videos look super expensive; if there’s cash for execution, where’s the cash for the media? A great example of content-over-media and an indication that Bacardi must have faith in social.
The only gripe I have is that there’s definitely a touch of the Man from Delmonté going on about the narrator, but the quality of the production and the nicely cinematic storyline make up for it. I’m really keen to see where they go with this campaign, hopefully some bad-ass cocktail tournament a la Enter the Dragon or something.
Anyway, enjoy (responsibly), the ‘Outsider’ or the ‘Samurai’ are my favourite vids of a very cool campaign
Take one measure of very enthusiastic blogger, a splash of voyeurism and pour liberally into glass rimmed with the frosting of Social Media du jour and voila, Dan 3.0′s latest “crowd-sourced social project”.
In case you don’t know, Dan 3.0 is a videoblogger from some off-the-map town in the States. Scruffy hair, witty retort and it seems, a significant number of followers on his YouTube channel. Now, there are many videobloggers out there, some are producing interesting content and others are just one of many annoying and pointless entities in the Social Media universe. I find Dan 3.0 both interesting and annoying. Watch the vid above to hear it straight from the horses mouth.
Got it?
So.. he’s planning to let the Internet browsing public determine what he is to do in his day-to-day life, for a whole year. And whilst there’s some ground rules (he won’t do anything illegal or morally reprehensible) the public are supposedly to have total authority on his everyday actions. He is essentially, relinquishing his free-will and crowdsourcing his own life . Exciting as this seems, this is nothing new – this has been happening in marriages since time incarnate. But with Dan 3.0 this is more fascinating than predictable.
Dan 3.0 makes some valid points about the Internet which I find comfortable acquiescence with. One thing the Internet has managed to do incredibly convincingly has drastically altered how information between communities is created, organised and transferred. The Internet has become a very productive environment where collaboration has driven major changes in productivity. For a great view on things like this I highly recommend reading anything by Clay Shirky and if you’re feeling averse to paper – watch his TED talk. He’s got some wonderfully elegant and optimistic techno-social ideas about the future of society in a connected age; the Internet connects people, people are social, so in essence the Internet IS social. This sociability coupled with an assumption that humans are fundamentally altruistic is cited by Clay as precursors to how we can make the world a better place by using the technology that the digital revolution has precipitated. It sounds extremely fluffy and before I go and admire my iPad over a latté trust me – it’s a nice concept. Go read it. Anyway, we digress..
So, Dan 3.0 and his crowdsourced life. Yes, crowd-sourcing in a digital age has worked before, and continues to do so. And better than working, we could argue that it has in some ways made the world a better place. Some points in case? Wikipedia - created by knowledgeable people, for knowledge seeking people. Linux - created by techy minded people for, techy seeking people etc… the list goes on.
So what is this crowdsourced social experiment from Dan 3.0? Is this for his followers, for a greater good or even heaven forbid… for himself?
Remember what happened to David Blaine when he decided to make a perspex box his home by Tower Bridge? He was baited, teased with burgers and even had golf balls pitched at him. More often than not, anyone that indulges in wild and public gestures of ‘self’ deprivation, will often find themselves subject to backlash. Or maybe this is just a British tendency?
Anyway, I’m trying hard to see what will come of Dan’s latest adventure in Social Media. He mentions ‘cool’ a lot. This is fine, but I can’t help but feel that the ‘coolness’ of it all and its veneer of ‘social exploration’ is a rather unsubtle attempt to disguise an elaborate attention seeking campaign – and with this number of potential viewers – commercial attention is more actual than probable. If we do end up seeing him engage in something out of the ordinary or socially constructive then this might become a successful and potentially insightful excerise both in terms of social media and in terms of what it is to be human. However, all I can fathom is that we ‘ll be seeing him fry some more eggs on his hob.
Am I going to watch him time to time?
Maybe.
Am I going to submit a wildly outlandish suggestion that involves pliers and his genitals?
There’s been building work going on on that side of Covent Garden for ages now, so it’s refreshing to see a teasing use of the temporary fixture. Apple Store, coming soon I guess?
