"Virgin Mobile USA (NYSE: VM) definitely walks to its own, very hip drumbeat," reports USA Today in a story today about how the pre-paid service provider "treads a quirky path to success." But oddly enough, the story doesn't mention its latest headline-catching stunt. The carrier is participating in an initiative to support organizations that will give brand new clothes to homeless kids. To generate more interest, Virgin launched Strip2Clothe, which asked people to post striptease videos of themselves online, and for every five times a video was viewed, Virgin would donate one piece of clothing. For the campaign, Virgin was working with the National Network For Youth (NN4Y), a D.C.-based group representing 150 homeless organizations, according to WirelessWeek. The striptease, however, got more than viewers aroused. Catholic Charities reportedly said that it was never consulted about the stunt and has called the campaign "distasteful," "inappropriate" and "exploitative." The organization's names have been taken off the site, and NN4Y has reportedly said the campaign has been "limited and it's being re-evaluated." The videos, however, can still be found at strip2clothe.com, where the tagline is: "You take off yours, we donate ours." So far, there has been 70,831 donations, according to the site's counter. But before you get too excited, yes, Virgin does have some standards: "to be clear – while the moniker of our effort is Strip2Clothe and we want you to have fun with it — keep it clean, too. Because youth homelessness is anything but a joke."
ContentNext's EconCeleb Seminar examines what drives the economics of celebrity content. July 23, 2008 at the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood. Learn more.
