America dug deep for Red Nose Day
Success! Horses wore red noses, buildings turned red, pop stars ate snails, and America dug deep for Red Nose Day
Red Nose Day USA was the reason we came to America, and last week it finally happened.
We took on the mighty task of engaging 318 million people with the odd idea of wearing a red nose to help children living in poverty – but the key things I’ll remember are a rogue collection of triumphs and disasters.
Over the past month, some things we never dreamed could go wrong went wrong. Our film crew showed up in Bangladesh to shoot an appeal film on the day our celebrity presenter showed up in Los Angeles saying she couldn’t go. I spent a thrilling morning waiting at 120th Street to film a sketch with Chris Rock, to discover that his driver had delivered him, an hour late, to 20th Street by mistake, at which point the shoot was cancelled. Our Spice Girl reunion had to be abandoned because only one Spice Girl was available. And I showed one actress a text from my son while we were filming saying how much he loved her (he hasn’t forgiven me for that), but by mistake she also read a text by me saying how scary she was (she hasn’t forgiven me for that).
We moved to LA for the final week and while Richard tried to make our NBC show a funny, edgy, compelling event, I sent a total of 900 emails to everyone I could find who had online strength, asking them to use their might on our behalf. Being alone in a rented house, there was nobody to hear my groans when we failed to get red noses on all Uber cars, or screams of joy when Bill Gates said his foundation would give $10 to our campaign for every tweet that used our hashtag.
Naomi Campbell flicked a big switch at the Empire State Building, and as dusk fell the building’s lights slowly turned red. To have such an iconic building glowing its silent support for our campaign actually made me cry, in a good way. The next day the famous Willis Building in Chicago also lit up red, the historic Nasdaq Stock Exchange Bell was rung in our honour, and the Brooklyn ferry stuck a massive nose on to its bow. At the other end of the scale, one of our team tried to get a nose on to a mounted New York policeman. He declined, but said his horse would be happy to help out, which indeed it was.
My favourite moment came via pop legend Ed Sheeran. We’d asked him to help, even though he was travelling in Asia, and he’d sent a video where he promised to eat a live sea snail while wearing a red tutu if the American public gave more than they had last year. To our delight, Harry Styles from One Direction re-tweeted the clip and within an hour 42,000 girls had sent the message, and the number for our text donation line, out to all their followers.
The show itself was terrifying but exhilarating. Wrangling the 65 stars taking part had often been a challenge, and every sketch had gone through a dozen rewrites – but Craig Ferguson hosted it exquisitely, the sketches were funny, the appeal films were hard-hitting, and when Ashton Kutcher broadcast himself on to Facebook live while answering calls from our on-stage phonebank, the highest number of viewers they’d ever had tuned in.
Inch by inch, little win by little win, it meant that over the campaign we sold nearly three times as many noses as last year, had more than 40 million hits online, on the day itself we trended on Twitter for nine hours, we flooded Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram with photos and messaging, and ended up raising a magnificent $32 million.
We’ve calculated that, astonishingly, the money will reach at least five million children living below the poverty line… so the only real loser, sadly, was Ed Sheeran. As our total was $9 million more than last year, he put on his tutu, ate a live sea snail with chopsticks, and instantly vomited into a plastic bag. Now that was funny.
‘We sold nearly three times as many noses, had more than 40m hits online, and raised $32 million’