Mother for Elton John AIDS Foundation
Mother has created a new strategy and brand identity for the Elton John AIDS Foundation to mark 20 years of the charity. The first iteration of this work is ‘Love Is In My Blood’ – a social media campaign for the Foundation to create a global conversation that reminds the world the fight against AIDS is winnable. It is the agency’s first work for the brand.
The campaign, which launched on Valentine’s Day, saw Elton John and a host of celebrities including Eminem, Adele, Shakira, Grace Jones, Paulo Coelho, Annie Lennox, Emeli Sande, Florence Welch, Ed Sheeran, Stephen Fry, Sting and Trudie Styler showing their love by pricking their fingers, creating a spot of blood, and tweeting the image accompanied by the words ‘Love Is In My Blood’ and a link to the Elton John AIDS Foundation website.
The campaign achieved a quarter of a billion impressions when the hashtags and handles for the foundation are combined. The #loveisinmyblood topic gained significant awareness across Twitter. The hashtagged tweets achieved a whopping 10% of all exposure from all celebrities and keywords involved during that window. The United States dominated the Twitter traffic, with the UK representing the other significant share of exposure.
As part of the campaign, the artist Ai Wei Wei created a 60-second film, featuring the words ‘Love is in OUR Blood’ over drops of blood, and the sound of a heartbeat that was watched by 5,000 people online on the day of launch.
As well as featuring on YouTube, the film ran simultaneously on screens in Times Square, Piccadilly Circus and Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine (the country which has the largest AIDS epidemic in Europe).
The film was watched on screen by around three million people over 24 hours, with an estimated 1.42 million impressions in New York, 390,000 in Kiev and 280,000 in Piccadilly Circus.
The brief from Elton John AIDS Foundation was to design packs to send out to celebrities giving them an understanding of the campaign, as well as asking them to prick their fingers and tweet ‘Love Is In My Blood’ in support.
Mother sent boxes to a number of celebrities, which contained information about the project and asked them to tweet said message. Each box featured a bespoke design, created by a number of illustrators, and a unique scarf.
The boxes contained instructions on what to do along with a silk scarf. The scarves were by Mateus Bailon and Michael Taylor. Mateus Bailon is a Brazilian street artist who designed his scarf in direct response to the campaign brief, whilst Michael Taylor’s scarf design is an existing piece of work donated by the South African artist to show his support. Taylor's scarves were donated by L'MAD, who print and sell limited editions printed silk scarves.
In order to respond to the level of activity on social media surrounding the campaign, Mindjumpers did the community management on all of the Foundation’s social media channels.
“Now more than ever we know how to beat AIDS,” commented Elton John. “Thanks to incredible work by the AIDS community over the past 20 years we now have affordable, quality treatment which saves lives and dramatically reduces the chances of passing on HIV. But these medicines don’t work against prejudice and discrimination. It’s time to stop treating people who are most vulnerable to HIV as outcasts. Everyone deserves the chance to protect themselves. Surely we have enough love for that.”
