The ‘8 GOALS FOR AFRICA’ is a newly released (today!) song and a part of an advocacy campaign on the 8 MDG’s by the same name developed by the United Nations System in South Africa. It brought together eight artists from across Africa and was produced by world-renowned music producer, Arthur Baker. The work on the video clip involved artists as admired as: Yvonne Chaka Chaka (South Africa), Angelique Kidjo (Benin), Hugh Masekela (South Africa) , Oliver Mutukudzi (Zimbabwe), or the Soweto Gospel Choir (South Africa).
I personally love awareness-raising songs and the message of unity they carry, just like I enjoy the idea of the lively campaigns directed to the youth in which I even sometimes take part. The ‘8 Goals for Africa’ website is young and vibrant and so is the video clip, but I can’t help thinking that this may still remain unnoticed just as the other initiatives.
How to make them popular and reach the audience they are directed to? How to spread the word and achieve more views? What do you th!nkers think?
I hereby open a brainstorming session 
. Let us, th!nkers advice the world organisations on how to make successful campaigns. All ideas are more than welcome!
I saw this earlier today, I love it. Campaign/awareness-raising/charity songs do well in the UK. I hope this one follows suit. As for getting it out there, try everything - twitter, facebook, emailing all your friends and getting them to do the same. Contact mainstream radio stations and tell them about it…
Hi Lara, I agree twitter, facebook and e-mails do work, but when you look at some of the United Nations initiatives and the response they get you would be surprised how relatively small it is! Huge actions with views on youtube of maybe a maximum of 200,000 views. And the UN used all the media they had (including facebook and twitter) to anounce the campaign!
The filmers of the video left out to mention the 8 goals in written text in the video. Pitty and a missed chance!
Helena, thanks for bringing this up. Great song. Art and music is a perfect mechanism to raise awareness… You are faster than me, as I was planning to write my next blog on the issue of raising awareness about malaria. Will do and make reference to this blog. Thanks.
I love the song, but I doubt whether actions like this are succesful. Even if they reach more people than they do now, it will not stick in people’s heads for more than a day. They find it somewhere (whether it is on twitter, facebook or by email), listen to it, love it, maybe they will mention their friends, maybe not. But after that they move on.
There have already been some MDGs songs, check these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pgdchkPo60
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZbhzn7rBro
@ Johan - indeed! if the goals were in written and were, at best, associated with their corresponding logos the video definitely would play an educational role
LOL
@ Bart - looking forward to your post, thanks!
@ Johan&Bart; - lol. I thought you were one very active participant, now I realise it’s two of you! haha, are you guys, brothers?
@ Hanna - Hanna, the point is now - if we were the people responsible for the campaign - what tools would we have at our disposal? Would we be able to use all the media of the UN Member States (TV, radio, newspapers) or would that be considered biased and limiting the freedom of press? How far do the UN Member States associate themselves with its campaigns? How to bridge that gap and is it at all possible?
@ Robert - wow! didn’t know there was any other MDG song! The first one seems to be a production of one of NGOs/the second seems to be an external initiative too, but anyone would imagine such a huge campaign would have already some huge hits in support!
@Helena. My blog on this went live 2 days ago… See ‘How to make the MDGs stick’. And yes, we’re brothers…. I can’t help that anymore…
)
The question for me still is - what is the target group and what you want to achieve with campaign..?
Wow - you guys are brothers! I missed that completely! Doh!