(CBS/What's Trending) - The art of celebritizing social good campaigns is widely practiced for the same reason more businesses are attaching themselves to causes: It works.
Consumers want to know what brands are doing to give back to their communities. As luck and Hollywood would have it, some celebrities are the biggest brands in town.
In addition to drawing media attention and the eyeballs of adoring fans, a new wave of social media-based nonprofit initiatives are welcoming audiences to engage with stars in a deeper and real-time way, while keeping the cause at the core.
In April, The Demi and Ashton Foundation (DNA) launched the Real Men Don't Buy Girls campaign, featuring series of online videos to garner support for their fight against child sex slavery. What better way to summon the digerati than to have the hottest personalities in entertainment and social media show the world what it means to be "real men"?
At the end of each video, Eva Longoria makes special appearance to pay homage to some other real men supporting the campaign.
In January, brand, celebrity and nonprofit connector Cause Media Group received the Mashable award for "Most Creative Social Good Campaign". With the help of some celebrity friends, the company's Twitter activated online auction TwitChange and raised over half a million dollars for aHomeinHaiti.org.
In March, TwitChange teamed up with the nonprofit CARE to change the lives of girls living in poverty in developing countries. This time around, participants in the auction made bids on the chance to share sweet tweet love with celebrities. Eva Longoria explains in this video.
Suffice to say, DNA's Real Men campaign and TwitChange are just the beginning of what's to come in celebritized social media for social good. It's a trend in and of itself. Anyone else notice the Eva Longoria trend, too?
