Celebrities - making charity cool

Liz Dodd argues that celebrities are brilliant campaigners for charities.

Snow Patrol supporting Make Poverty History Band Aid 2005 Thom Yorke is dumped on for Make Trade Fair

Make Poverty History had two challenges to meet in 2005; to make charity cool, and compassion a commodity. Young people in the 21st century are the internet generation: the age of music downloads, microwave popcorn and instant messaging. Abstract charity - giving for the sake of it - was never going to sell. To get the push the movement needed, MPH needed to get commercial - clothes, CDs, films, gigs. and wristbands. To sell you need a salesman. The best salesmen of all? Celebrities.

Planned with more precision and audience awareness than the best pre-Christmas advertising campaign, Make Poverty History exploded into the media with more impact than Jennifer Anniston and Brad Pitt splitting up. The campaign has been structured around celebrity, has hung from it and climbed onto its shoulders. Maybe you first heard about it watching the Vicar of Dibley Christmas Special? Or maybe you bought 'Do They Know it's Christmas?', 2004's Christmas number one?

At the beginning of January 2005, white bands went on sale and flew off the shelves. Why? Because everyone was wearing them. From Sugababes to Snow Patrol, Radiohead to Rachel Stevens, you couldn't watch TV, couldn't go to the cinema, couldn't listen to the radio without seeing one. Any grassroots movement needs motivation: celebrities are in a unique position to motivate. If they can sell us make-up, perfume, cars and beer, there's no reason they can't sell us a conscience.
When Live8 came, it was time to pull out the big guns. In 24 hours, 3 billion people were moved by the struggle to end extreme poverty, a struggle put into words - and music - by The Killers, Pete Doherty, Razorlight, Madonna, Pink Floyd.

And let's go back to 18 June 2005: U2 at Twickenham Stadium. As on every night of the tour, Bono had the audience hold up their mobiles - 21st century gigging's version of the lighter - in the darkened stadium. But this was no photo op. A number - the number to text to put your name to Bono's petition, the petition to Make Poverty History - appeared on the seven-or-something-insane-storey high LED screens at the back of the stage. Leaving the 80,000 strong audience to do just that, U2 swung into 'One', and the stadium lit up like so many galaxies as tens of thousands of people joined the movement.

Endorsing celebrity? Boosting sales? Maybe, but if just one of those people showed up to march in Edinburgh, sent one letter to an MP, one e-mail to Gordon Brown, it doesn't matter: it's one more campaigner for economic equality, one more voice crying out against the injustice of devastating poverty.