Keep A Child Alive is a small organization dedicated to fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa and India. But with so many other causes and issues-of-the-moment to worry about, the world had seemingly lost interest in the AIDS epidemic. So to raise much needed funding for KCA, we had to get the world talking and caring about AIDS again.We realized that if the millions of people dying each year weren’t enough to get the world’s attention, perhaps losing the lives of those we idolize most would.

So on World AIDS Day Hollywood Died…digitally.The world’s top celebrity tweeters vowed to stay off all social media until $1million was raised to fight AIDS. While our goal was obviously to raise the money, it was just as important to us that the idea would create widespread media and PR coverage, which would spread awareness of KCA and their important mission.

On December 1st – World AIDS Day – the world’s top celebrity tweeters sacrificed their digital lives to help save millions of real ones. They sent out personalized Last Tweet & Testaments to their millions of fans, vowing to stay all social media until $1 million was raised to buy their digital lives back. We were completely dependent on the power of each celebrity’s social network to spread awareness. And it worked. Their “Last Tweets” created an unprecedented amount of PR coverage for a fundraising effort, and soon the campaign was everywhere and donations began pouring in.

Our objective was to raise as much money as possible for KCA and its fight against AIDS, but it was just as important to raise the overall awareness of the AIDS epidemic and make it a top-of-mind issue once more. We succeeded with both objectives.Not only did we raise the $1 million dollars in under six days, but we created an unprecedented amount of coverage for a fundraising effort. KCA became a household name in the fight against AIDS literally overnight.- Campaign accounted for 1/3 of all coverage of World AIDS Day- buylife.org was inundated with 10k hits/second- Sparked worldwide media coverage- Thousands of normal people joined the celebrities by sacrificing their own digital lives.- 1.5 BILLION media impressions (we’re not making that up)In the end, the campaign helped KCA save millions of real lives with just a few Digital Deaths.