Ashton Kutcher Ends Hunger in the US by Tweeting

So as of late, the Squid has been working on a project for a pretty massive software company out in California. The project itself is pretty top secret, and I’m sure I’d be dead within the hour if I started talking about it specifically – but I can say that I’ve been doing a smidgen of research into viral marketing and celebrity endorsements.

During that research (aka. web browsing on my patio) I stumbled onto this video of Ashton Kutcher launching an awareness campaign, and I was taken aback at the low level of production and the freewheeling nature of his delivery. Basically, Ashton hops on this live broadcasting site – USTREAM – babbles, and twitters until he’s got a thousand people watching him. That’s it – he’s asking people to tweet the broadcast, building a LIVE audience out of nothing. That’s what makes this startling different for me. We’ve been barraged with clever ‘viral’ videos and marketing campaigns for years now, but here is someone building a live attentive audience on the fly without print ads, tv ads, or even unique website.

The video dawdles on until he gets to his point, which I think is probably fine for his audience. Upon building 1000 people watching his broadcast he goes into his pitch, which is obviously scripted but not painfully so. The campaign itself sounds interesting, utilizing user generated content to build a awarness campaign. That seems like the best approach – illicit user generated content, then use experts to craft that content into something coherent and polished. I have no doubt that it will make a great video piece, and the corporate sponsorship will certainly help hungry people. I’m not dogging the effort by the people involved here – even Ashton Kutcher is donating social capital – but we can create marketing campaigns and donate cash until there are piles of organic veggie dogs on every street corner. Until there’s a cohesive plan to battle the root causes of hunger people will still go hungry (Sorry about the soapbox rant).

What are the implications of this kind of effort for us normal folks? How do we translate these new communications venues into practical vehicles to aid and promote our own projects? More on this later, need to get some work done.

Posted at 8:59 pm on 6-16-2009

I think the key is to have an audience that you can talk to that are genuinely interested in the things that you have to say. Ashton Kutcher is this huge celebrity and there is a lot of celebrity worship out there, so he has a pretty big audience to work from.

You or me, we work in a field where there is an audience, but you have to work a lot harder to get them to listen because everyone is trying to get you to listen. I don’t see any problem with shooting out a twitter message saying “Hey I’m playing around in Photoshop with some sweet new brushses, come look – **ustream link**”. You’d probably get a few people, increase your profile in their eyes, and, if you’re good, possibly have a bigger audience the next time you give it a go.

So that’s the main problem: getting the audience. Once you get that, if you are actually good at the stuff that you’re doing, then you’ll be golden. I’d certainly watch a designer create a web template from scratch if for nothing else then to see the whole process from someone who actually knows what their doing’s perspective.

Joel Berg

Posted at 12:23 pm on 7-22-2009

Is this supposed to be serious? Hunger systemtically impacts 36.2 million Americans. Low-income Americans would need more than $20 billion — yes billion — extra dollars per year in food purchasing power to end U.S. hunger. The ten million donation is only 1/2400th of the amount of money needed to solve the problem. Giving people the false impression that a few tweets can end a major social problem is absurd. To truly end this problem, we need serious government leadership and for corporations to raise wages, not just give a few token donations.

– Joel Berg
Executive Director
New York City Coalition Against Hunger

Reid Peifer

Posted at 1:05 pm on 7-22-2009

Hey Joel, thanks for the comment and for providing some much appreciated context to the discussion. The title and the proposition is of course facetious. I was looking at the Ashton Kutcher effort through the lense of marketing and communication and wondering if the technology is applicable to normal folks.

Absolutely the amount of money being mentioned is scarcely a drop in the bucket, and I’m sure it’s presented far more as a marketing effort than out of any serious attempt to address a systemic and hegemonic problem.

But… what can you or I take from this example? Here’s a dude with a built in audience (something we lack) and some new and interesting communication vehicles (which we have at our disposal). Can we leverage things like Twitter or UStream to create instant and live dialog and better communicate our message? Or are these tools dependent on the built-in audience that only comes with celebrity?

What kinds of communication vehicles have worked for your organization? Are you using Facebook, twitter, etc at all to any success?

I’m currently volunteering with an innercity school to try and use the web and some of these tools to more effectively benefit the students and their community. All insight would be much appreciated!