Tweeting for Good
Philanthropy needs a cool image, and if Hugh Jackman can help build that, then more power to him.
After getting a lesson in the type of scrutiny his Tweets attract, Hugh Jackman has found a clever way to use his Celeb-Twit powers for good: good causes, good PR, it's all good.
I first heard about this story last Wednesday 15 April via Arjun Ramachandran's article Tweet Charity: Jackman's $100, 000 Twitter pledge.
Ramachandran posted his story about 6 hours after the original tweet. They must be on permanent Twitter alert down at Fairfax.
Only a week before on Wednesday 8 April the same publication, http://www.smh.com.au/, had published a story by Sean Nicholls and Emily Dunn, Jackman Tweet is out of Tune. An expose of the shockingly obvious, that Hollywood celebrities have personal assistants.
Jackman later responded by admitting that he had phoned a tweet in to the office rather than typing it himself and in a Chinese Whispers moment a US based assistant had translated his message to the world as: "Having lunch on the harbor across from the Opera Center. Loving life!"
Funnily enough there was no criticism of the American spelling in the tweet:
"I will donate 100K to one individual's favorite non profit organization.Of course,you must convince me why by using 140 characters or less."
And fair enough, when a bloke offers to donate money to a good cause we should cut him some slack.
What a comeback; good on him, and good on whoever it was over at team Jackman who came up with the idea. Yes, it's exploiting social media as a PR machine, but it's doing so in the right spirit.
Although the attraction of social media tools is that they supposedly give everybody a platform, the power of celebrity is still unbeatable. Philanthropy needs a cool image, and if Hugh Jackman can help build that then more power to him.
It does work, I just trawled through the first few pages of recent tweets to him and got interested in some charities I'd never even heard of before , such as http://www.invisiblechildren.com/ – probably the most social media savvy charity site I've ever seen, which is probably why they've been so successful in mobilising their supporters for this opportunity.
I am a born again twit. At first I saw no point to it unless you were an over-sharer, but for a non-profit such as Open Forum it is a fabulous tool. It allows us to connect with people without being a pest. With one very generous tweet Hugh Jackman has helped thousands of charities understand how tools like Twitter can help them reach people.
It will be exciting to see who gets the cash, here's hoping there's a snowball effect with matched funds topping up the kitty.
foggy
April 19, 2010 at 8:59 am
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