MTV has just launched its newest star - Cherry Girl, a mysterious mischief maker with big plans about changing the world in small ways.
Cherry Girl is an online persona for the latest MTV Switch campaign. She will live and grow in many platforms, hoping to inspire the world with her playful ways. She blogs, she Facebooks, she frolicks about in videos. Oh, and she Twitters.
The fictional back story is that MTV discovered Cherry Girl in February 2009, after picking up on a trail of 'positive anarchy' - a series of playful events. They are now launching their new discovery globally, with the hope that her quirky, mischievous twist on environmentalism will rub off on the MTV audience.
The Cherry Girl campaign is part of a growing trend of trying to take digital campaigns beyond the scope of the internet to create real communities and real world results. Interactivity is no longer just about well-designed websites and Flash games - it's about interacting with the people and environment around you.
John Jackson, director of social responsibility for MTV Networks, hopes that Cherry Girl will lead by example with her playful-not-preachy approach. "The initiative is very much about taking the online offline in order to connect with people and ultimately encourage social action. The essence of the effort is about Cherry Girl encouraging people to do real life deeds. It's not just about taking a pledge or committing to doing something - it's about real life action," he says.
Cherry Girl was unveiled in a 60 second PSA from RSA director Johnny Hardstaff and London-based creative agency The Scarlett Mark. It shows Cherry Girl eating cherries, secreting the seeds into the pockets of strangers, and watching as a grim city landscape is transformed into an orchard.
London-based creative company Scarlett Mark have been working on the campaign - moulding the character of Cherry Girl and creating her persona for the last nine months.
"It kind of feels like we've given birth - you don't know what your child's going to become," muses creative Richard Peters.
As well as the online persona, Scarlett Mark have engage DJs and artists from all over the world to help create Cherry Girl's footprint in the real world. For example, one DJ in Mexico City wants to make a mural of her using recycled record covers.
The spot will be broadcast across a number of MTV's 66 localised TV channels, hopefully driving people online in search of the mysterious character. As well as an official website, she has a Flickr group, blog, Facebook fan page and Twitter account. However they weren't about to splash her on every platform going just for the sake of it - everything had to ring true with the character they had created. So, for example, she doesn't have a MySpace page because she just didn't seem like the kind of girl who would.
And despite this fully fleshed out character, Peters is very upfront that this is not a real person. Online audiences have moved on from the days of Lonely Girl 15, and any attempt to try and sell her as a real person rather than a persona would be seen as cynical.
It's a campaign that ticks all the boxes for 2009 - it's feel good, it's about real community, and it uses Twitter. But will it work? Jackson reckons so. "Over the years, the MTV brand has cultivated an unparalleled relationship with young people and it is in a unique position to engage with them in the dialogue surrounding pressing social issues such as climate change," he says. "This, paired with our creative content and multi-platform capacity, places us in the ultimate position to effect positive behavioural change amongst youth; by connecting with them, rather than sermonising."
According to Peters, Cherry Girl is a normal-but-not-so-normal character that viewers around the world will identify with - and this, he feels is the key to success. She's not a pampered pop star but a girl with an ordinary job who lives in an urban environment.
"We came up with a whole new character to symbolise the new MTV generation," he elaborates. "Everything that has been done before is all very dictatorial - it's all about deprivation. The audience is passionate about the environment but they're also passionate about having fun."
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MTV Switch Energy Kidsby Anovsky2,498 views
what is the name of this song?
ghettobiz97 1 year ago
great
Moou93 2 years ago
cool ideas, awesome colors.
kabl33t 2 years ago