Don't Vote! My favorite celebrity PR campaign

5 More Friends I really liked the “Don’t Vote” PR campaign that I saw a little while ago on MySpace, because it was very different from other PR campaigns and PSAs (Public service announcements) and therefore very effective. Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Snoop Dogg, Harrison Ford, Julia Roberts, Ben Stiller, Will Smith, Steven Spielberg, Justin Timberlake, along with Sacha Baron Cohen as “Borat,” Zach Braff, Colin Farrell, Neil Patrick Harris, Scarlett Johansson, Shia LeBeouf, Tobey Maguire, Ryan Reynolds, and Jason Segal, are featured in a second of a series of public service announcements to encourage the American youth to vote in partnership with Google, YouTube, Declare Yourself, and MySpace. The non-partisan PSA’s, produced by DiCaprio’s Appian Way, were created to engage and inspire young people to vote and participate in the elections of 2008. I think that they did a very good job especially with the first part of the spot, because it attracts one’s attention right away: people who watch it for the first time must be really puzzled by the fact that all those celebrities all of a sudden start telling people NOT to vote instead of the other way round as usual. One starts to follow the spot closely, because one does not want to miss what else they have to say. Bit by bit the spot starts to resolve the pretended misunderstanding, and the celebrities explain that they were only being sarcastic and they start to bring across their real message: VOTE! In my opinion, it is very effective to use A-list celebrities for a PR campaign like this, because people often feel like they actually know those people and most people are interested in what celebrities have to say and therefore listen to them. I also think that the spot was very cleverly made, because the celebrities do not seem like they are only saying any of their lines from the script; to the contrary they seem really natural and convinced by what they say and it seems as if they all say what they really think (which probably is true, because that is why so many famous celebrities took part in this campaign). This short spot shows that celebrity PR does not necessarily have to be something bad and that celebrities do not always use PR in order to promote themselves or their latest movie/song. Some of them make use of PR to support a good cause with their name. Also, PR does not always have to be shocking and scandalizing like for example most stories about Britney Spears. Good PR brings along a message that the celebrities support to their target public and creates relationships with it, in this case young voters. And whatever some people might have to say against the impact that PR really has, it apparently works.