When's the last time you heard the dare of playing 'Knock, knock Ginger ' on someone actually saving thousands of lives?
It started on April 13th when Kutcher realized he was closing in on a million followers on the newest social media darling Twitter.In his typical prankster form Kutcher offered to 'Ding Dong Ditch' Ted Turner's house in Atlanta if he reached the mark before his nearest rival CNNbrk (CNN Breaking News). The following day Larry King responded that CNN was up for the match and that Ted doesn't take these competitions lightly. Kutcher, under the handle of 'aplusk' (a+k), and CNN raced to the milestone as fans of both competitors lobbied on and offline to be followed.
Ashton lays out the prank
Larry King responds on behalf of CNN
In an interesting twist 2 days into the competition, we all found out that 'CNNbrk' was not the real Cable News Network formerly owned by Turner but by James Cox. That day it was announced that CNN 'acquired' the CNNbrk handle from Cox in the form of consulting 'services' he'll provide to them since selling Twitter handles is against the terms of use.
Somewhere along this twisted tale 'aplusk' upped the ante by offering $100,000 to Malaria No More if he won. It was at that point that 'Follow Ashton Kutcher' billboards started showing up in various locations in the US and the rallying call was let's get 10,000 bed nets to Africa. Late Saturday evening, April 16th Kutcher flashed the $100,000 cheque live across the internet and annouced his victory.
After that win, Oprah joined the Twitter fray and also donated 20,000 nets, CNN despite losing donated 10,000 nets, Ryan Seacrest of American Idol tossed in 10,000 along with P Diddy. That's 60,000 nets between them.
My hat is off to Kutcher for recognizing the opportunity to turn a silly publicity stunt into a meaningful publicity stunt. Thanks to the work of our client UN Foundation , Malaria No More, these celebrities, and almost 2 million Twitter followers World Malaria Day on April 15th got a ton of exposure and nets for families in Africa.
Ted Turner was a great sport in this whole affair and has further pushed 'aplusk' to sign up 10,000 more Nothing but Nets supporters and he'll have Kutcher and his wife Demi Moore at his famous Atlanta BBQ restaurant for Buffalo burgers.
Ted Turner congratulates Ashton
So, good on Ted Turner and the UN Foundation in leveraging the social media tools to create and sustain the buzz around World Malaria Day. In addition to the nets donated by the celebrities, Turner's Nothing But Nets campaign (and our client) raised an additional 275,000 nets that also went to Africa.
