In the near 30 years MTV has been in operation, it has played a tremendous role in shaping popular youth culture.  In addition to the videos, popular culture and reality TV shows, the network has a long history of promoting social activism through innovative campaigns.  The channel has covered political, social, and environmental issues and used its vast network of resources to get the messaging across.

One such campaign is the “Staying Alive” campaign.  It was initially launched in 1998 as a TV program to raise awareness on safe-sex and HIV/AIDS issues.  At the time, Bill Roedy, current Chairman and CEO of MTV Networks International realized that the original MTV generation grew up without any formal HIV/AIDS awareness education.  Roedy’s extensive work with UNAIDS had him recognize the importance of addressing this topic as part of global youth citizenship, and the impact the education can have on youth health and sexual identity.  Since being launched, Staying Alive quickly became one of the world’s largest awareness and advocacy campaigns for HIV/AIDS.

After almost 6 years of success, the MTV Staying Alive Foundation (SAF) was founded in 2004.  As the TV program team met with various teens and young people to film documentaries and PSAs for the campaign, they quickly saw the dearth of ideas the youth had and their lack of resources to materialize these ideas and projects.  From there, the foundation was built on the philosophy of connecting youth at the grass-roots level to provide resources and tools for causes around HIV/AIDS awareness.

Paul Dien, Director of Strategic Partnerships of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation says they realized as a grant writing organization that SAF “can do more than just give [grants], we can also help inspire the youth.”  The foundation’s mission is to “encourage, energize, and empower young people who are involved in HIV/AIDS awareness, education, and prevention campaigns.”  Staying Alive Foundation fulfills on this mission through small scale grants of up to $12,000 to youth and adults below 28 years of age.

With MTV’s pervasive brand presence and ample resources for messaging, SAF has a powerful platform to pursue its objectives.  In addition to MTV’s traditional media resources, the organization uses various new media tools such as Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and Mashable to build online ubiquity.  When asked what differentiates SAF from other HIV/AIDS awareness organizations, Dien says that SAF is a multi-platform organization that has a strong online and digital presence as well as marketing savvy from staff members’ years at MTV.  Dien also acknowledges that leveraging the MTV branding helps to “cultivate compelling stories to the audience.”

As an example, SAF has appointed two celebrity ambassadors, Travis McCoy and Kelly Rowland to further the organization’s efforts.  The use of celebrity representatives provides yet another avenue for SAF to reach mass audiences on awareness about HIV/AIDS.  As part of his ambassadorship, McCoy mentions his involvement with Staying Alive in his Tweets, and has over 900,000 followers on his Twitter account.  Despite any potential capital resource constraints as a non-profit organization, the use of social media in this manner is highly cost effective, as it serves as a cheap, quick, and expansive communications tool.

Another innovative approach incorporating new technology was a campaign called “Stand By What You Say” from 2008.  The aim of the campaign was to encourage and empower young people to speak openly about sex and HIV/AIDS in an effort to reduce stigma and discrimination often associated with the disease.  The campaign was a groundbreaking cause-related social networking campaign utilizing voice powered technology.  People were prompted to call a number and leave a voice message which would then be converted to text.  This text would then be posted on an online blog to further community engagement and discussion.  Upon leaving a message, callers were subsequently asked to make a pledge to the Staying Alive Foundation.

A campaign like “Stand By What You Say” breaks the mold in the manner in which people make donations to charities, as well as how people share sensitive and personal topics on a large scale without fear of embarrassment or retribution, while simultaneously fostering open dialogue.  The campaign demonstrated that youth and young adults could involve and educate others to change attitudes about the AIDS epidemic and safe-sex measures in a cutting-edge way.

SAF’s work is promoted with no political agenda, and much of its educational resources- TV programming, video, and literature are rights free.  Taking this approach helps the foundation promote its objectives to as broad of an audience as possible, and fosters a sense of community through active information sharing.

Aside from the MTV Staying Alive Foundation, Population Services International’s YouthAIDS is the most comparable organization active in this space, with efforts to educate youth about HIV/AIDS through the use of media and pop culture.  What distinguishes SAF from YouthAIDS are its grants to the youth to help launch programs and projects related to HIV/AIDS awareness and education.

As Dien notes, SAF is “trying to do it full-out” in its approach to get the right messaging across to its audience, and it will be interesting to continue to follow the organization while it works with MTV and the cadre of associated brands under the Viacom/MTV empire.

http://foundation.staying-alive.org/en