Digital Relief
12th March 2009
The annual fundraising event that is Comic Relief takes place on 13th March, but as is always the case, the publicity drive has started much earlier. This year you will find the Red Nose Campaign on the usual TV channels, radio and newspapers but also the social networks Twitter, Facebook and Bebo as celebrities and the public alike don their red noses to raise millions of pounds for UK and African causes.
There will be some parts of the fundraising that cannot be done through digital channels – Chris Moyles, Cheryl Cole and their celebrity friends had to physically climb Mount Kilimanjaro or they would not have raised over £1.5 million. However, as a addict of his Radio 1 show, I listened in every day to hear from Moyles as he got closer to the summit – talking to the studio on their satellite phone. It sounded like he was calling from Telford, not Tanzania and technology helped Radio 1 listeners hear how the climb was going and offer encouragement from thousands of miles away.
Celebrities such as Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross have taken Comic Relief onto the social networks, providing the public with multiple channels to donate money through. The fundraising spectacle has its own Facebook page, enabling people to donate any which they want on any platform they prefer – over 40,000 people have already visited this site. BBC’s own technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, will be posting updates on Twitter during the evening of Comic Relief on his iPhone, photographing the action as it happens and running competitions.
Comic Relief also launched a competition around digital media. This year’s strapline for the fundraising is “do something funny for money”. In conjunction with Becta, Comic Relief has invited schools to perform something funny and upload their content on the Red Nose Day Showcase. The winning entry will win £5,000 worth of ICT equipment for their school – the deadline is 31st March.
Due to the vast popularity of the digital campaign, Comic Relief has increased their website traffic by 100%. It would be interesting to know how much of the final Comic Relief fundraising total can be attributed to these digital channels, I might just drop a quick email to Lenny Henry…………
