Maddie Swenson- owned media post

LifeBeat: Know Your Status Stage

LifeBeat is a not-for-profit organization that held a concert in New York to encourage young people to get tested for HIV. This campaign they held fits well with what their mission statement says about their organization. They are dedicated to reaching the youth about HIV/AIDS prevention. They also use the talents and resources of the music industry to raise awareness and provide support among the people in the AIDS community. In this campaign they are targeting teens and young adults specifically New York City youth who were within the age of 13-24 and have never been tested for HIV.

The issue they saw was that teens today in America do not think that they ever will contract this disease and don’t need to get tested for it. They only see it as being a major issue in Africa. Some also think that the test is inconvenient and painful. The challenge LifeBeat dealt with was how they were going to get the youth to engage in a subject they refuse to think about. Insights that led to the solution were found that teens today are digital natives and they thrive on real cultural experiences outside of that digital world. LifeBeat also saw that music is their culture and many define themselves by the type of music they follow. Lastly, they found out through social media youth today have an anxiety of the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) on real world experiences. With all of this information, LifeBeat created an un-missable music event where the only way to get a ticket is to take a HIV test.

They brought this event to life by hosting a concert, KYSS (Know Your Status Stage) featuring a good talent lineup who were popular with their target audience as well as having a passion for the cause. The word was spread through social media. They utilized the musician’s social media as well as their own homepage and social media platforms (Facebook/Twitter) to help build awareness of the concert. They also marketed the event internally to all the staff of the organization to continue to spread word about KYSS. They way they were able to measure their success was through the number of tickets that were handed out. They surpassed their goal of reaching out to 167 teens to get tested and ended up having 500 people tested during their campaign.

(Owned media, LifeBeat, HIV, AIDS, KYSS, NYC youth)