Last week, we reported that a bunch of Hollywood celebrities would “die” on Twitter and social media in an effort to raise money for Keep A Child Alive, a charity benefiting AIDS victims across the world. A week later, we have the results of the campaign.
The celebrity coalition raised the requisite $1 million to get back on social media, but not without the help of this dude:
That’s right, this cool guy was responsible for a very generous $550,000 donation to put the celebrity coalition past their goals and back onto social media again. His name? Stewart Rahr, a billionaire pharmaceutical executive who had just sold his company, Kinray, for $1.3 billion recently.
It couldn’t have come at a better time because according to the New York Post, the campaign was plodding along fairly slowly with only $450,000 raised in 6 days:
But it took longer than expected, and insiders say the celebs became frustrated. “It’s the worst mismanagement of star power I’ve ever seen in my life,” said a source close to the program.
Sources said the organization expected to raise the $1 million in a week. But by yesterday, after six days, it had taken in only about $450,000. Stars including Kim Kardashian, who can earn about $10,000 a tweet, started getting itchy fingers.
One source blamed servers that crashed for 12 hours on the first night for the slow-paced donations. Others blamed lack of promotion and overestimating the participants’ Twitter power.
Another source said, “Some stars thought the money would be raised in 24 hours, and were embarrassed that critics said it proves nobody cares about their Twitter presence.”
You didn’t have to be Nostradamus to predict that some of the celebrities would get antsy if the campaign took longer than expected. In fact, if you take a quick look at Usher’s Twitter page, you’ll see that he couldn’t wait to get his tweet back on as he jumped the gun in tweeting before the charity goal was met.
Listen, we hate to say “I told you so.” But we will anyway.
It was a great cause to raise money for and the concept definitely sounded good on paper, at least the first time you read it. But, again, it was poorly executed and vastly overrated the attachment people have to the social media updates of celebrities. There’s just no way people care that much about a celebrity’s social media feed to be motivated to donate money to keep the feed “on the air,” no matter what the cause is. Throw in some selfish celebrity personalities and you have a recipe for failure.
Despite the embarrassing snags, the story did end up with a happy ending, though, as the $1 million for charity was raised. It just didn’t come from a source they envisioned.
