One Campaign video finally sees light of day

Bono’s One Campaign is finally going to get its allotted time on the airwaves. The organization—which is working to motivate U.S. citizens in the fight against the AIDS crisis in Africa and in helping the world’s poorest people—will air a 60-second video originally planned to air on the Oscars this Sunday on both ABC and MTV Networks, according to this release. Fittingly, its debut on ABC will be during an episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” featuring a woman who has helped three of her adopted children face living with AIDS. The video, produced by @radical.media, incorporates people from the left, right and center, ranging from Pat Robertson to Brad Pitt (pictured gratuitously here), talking about the need to get involved. I'm glad to see ABC is finally airing the thing because its non-appearance on the Oscars was, quite frankly, disturbing. I'm on the email list for the One Campaign and try to support the organization in the modest ways that a harried working Mom can, and so was in the loop about its planned Academy Awards appearance. Its debut there had been touted not only by Bono in a speech he gave in February at the TED conference (upon winning the TED prize) but also in emails from The One Campaign. Then, the day after the Oscars, I got this perplexing email: “Unfortunately, despite repeated assurances, our ONE Campaign video was not shown during the Oscars award ceremony. We are all disappointed and concerned, and we are looking into why this happened.” In fact, one of my colleagues called over to ABC; after getting passed around for awhile, officials there never came up with an explanation for the video’s non-appearance. OK, enough talk of corporate mix-ups. While we’re on the subject of getting media time and space for what is probably the world’s greatest crisis, I'll shine the AdFreak light on something from that Bono TED speech that didn’t get nearly the press it should have, at least among the media people who can do something about it. TED winners get to make three wishes, which Tedsters—some of the most influential people in technology, entertainment and design—then try to fulfill. And one of his wishes was to get one billion donated media impressions for the cause by the time of the G8 Africa Summit in July. (That would be one hit for every severely impoverished person on the planet, BTW.) Hey, media people out there, there are less than four months left. Get moving and donate thy media impressions. Now, AdFreak will return to its regular snarky programming.

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

April 7, 2005 | Permalink