I won't say he told me so....but he told me so......

In shock news it looks like Rob Dyson might have been right (see the tweets below). Last week I was extolling the virtues of Keep a child Alive’s celebrity ‘digital suicide’ fundraiser whilst he was taking a more conservative stance. Read Rob’s analysis here.

  

The aim is to raise US$1m.  Until then the stars will refrain from tweeting and facebook.

The big launch was six days ago and I’d have expected the bulk of the money to have come in in the first day or two.  However as you can see from the web site they have so far raised less than US$300,000, or under 30% of the target.

The question now is will it reach the $1m mark before the PRs, record companies and managers start telling the stars to get back online?  They haven’t broken ranks yet but I’d be amazed if they didn’t. 

In what will probably be a post mortem, rather than a debrief, the questions will be have they understood social media well enough?  Rob clearly didn't think so (see his blog mentioned above).

From a fundraising perspective did they get the price point right? For many peopel a fixed donation can form a barrier to entry. Think of the fan bases, they are frequently young, many teenagers, with more limited disposable income.  Maybe US$10 (about £6.40), when they get nothing in return, is too high.  Think of a 14 year old girl on a pay-as-you-go contract.  Is she likely to be happy with a $10 charge taken from her credit?  Maybe lowering the price point to $2/3 would have helped.  It's a difficult call to work out the price point at which you maximise participation.  For example 100 people paying $10 is good but 500 people paying $3 is better