Rockstars, Artwork and $75,000 for Charity : A How To

:: Special Guest Post from our nonprofit Friend Keith Hejna ::

Millions of children receive no music education due to school budget cuts. I asked celebrities and rockstars like Gene Simmons, Stephen Colbert, Stan Lee and Slash to help fill the void by painting blank Fender(R) guitars to be auctioned off for Little Kids Rock (www.littlekidsrock.org), a national nonprofit that restores and revitalizes music education in U.S public schools.
(Click to see entire list of artists)

Fans and collectors would pay thousands for these one-of-a-kind, playable pieces of rock ‘n roll artwork, but the challenge was to make these people aware of the items as well as the fact that the proceeds go to bringing low-income children a rockin’ music education.

No matter what the goal, it is extremely important to know your audience. So when using social networking sites, print media, radio, TV, blogs or other channels to broadcast a message, it is important to cast the net wide, but also to target particular groups.

How do you find these cohorts and how do you reach them?  It’s all about the mouthpiece.

Most people are too busy to care what I have to say, especially if they don’t know me from another internet scam-artist (or spam-artist). I know if I were a Marvel Comics fanatic and saw a random person’s tweets or facebook posts about an exclusive Spiderman guitar with Stan Lee’s autograph, I’d question its validity.

So it’s not just what‘s being said, but who is saying it that’s important. If the right person is says it, the right people will hear it. The message is much more potent and valid coming from Jack Johnson than it is coming from me.

part two coming tomm!