To raise awareness of VH1’s Do Something Awards, VH1 created its own spoof charity called “Give a Shit." VH1 decided that startling, bad language isn’t offensive. What is offensive, however, is that fact that there are people dying from lack of clean water, rainforest devastation, famine in Africa and, well, a lot of other things. The goal of GAS is to engage and enlist younger generations to care about changing the world through positive thinking. No matter who you are, you have a few moments for solitude and contemplation at least every other day—so the next time you take a shit, pick something that you care about, whether it’s global warming or starving kids—and give a shit about it. To promote the Give a Shit Campaign and in turn, The VH1 Do Something Awards, the network created a humorous, informational video of “Twilight" star and campaign spokesman Nikki Reed encouraging people to visit Give A Shit.org and to start spreading the word through their own social networks. To participate in the campaign, young people were asked that the next time they “take a shit", to post something that they “give a shit" about. (A #GiveAShit hash tag was used on Twitter) This way, users would be making the world a little better and inspire their friends to do the same. Results: Total site traffic: 87,556 Shits given: 21,521 Average Twitter Follower Count: 15, 836 Uses of “Give a Shit" Avatar: 532 Total Impressions: 1,545,390 Blog news pick-ups included well-known ad trade publications, “Twilight" fan blogs and celebrity publications. Notable of these included: AdWeek, SocialTimes, Breaking Dawn Movie, Nikke Reed online, Adventures in Twilighting, IMDb, Perez Hilton, PopCrunch, Starpulse and Huffington Post. Celebrities used the #GiveAShit hash tag and tweeted what they #GiveAShit about. This included the likes of Tony Hawk, Nick Cannon and Shaunie O’Neal. VH1 also took a Klout test (A service that measures influence based on your ability to drive action and compares it to others) in which the Give a Shit Campaign received a high score of 59.4. The network’s shocking Give a Shit campaign captured audiences attention, got them involved and successfully created buzz surrounding DoSomething.org in the lead up to the August 18 airing of VH1’s Do Something Awards.
