My Friend’s Place: Taking Advantage of the Publicity
On August 24, 2014 the 31st annual MTV Video Music Awards were held in California. The most prestigious award given away that night was to Miley Cyrus for Video of the Year. Miley accepted her award in a way that shocked everyone watching.
She sent up a boy name Jesse, a homeless youth, to accept her award for her. Instead of thanking directors, producers, friends, and family members like most winners do, Jesse directed the attention of the audience to an organization called My Friend’s Place. Along with telling some of his story, he promoted the organization and informed everyone they could go to Miley’s FaceBook page for instructions on how to donate.
My Friend’s Place (MFP) is located in Los Angeles, California and serves and supports the homeless youth in the surrounding area. The audience of their website is ideally people living in Los Angeles who are interested in helping the community through volunteer work/donations and want to learn more in general about MFP. However, since Miley’s measure of advertising at the VMA’s, the site’s intended audience could arguably be Miley’s fans and supporters. Since she is now tied to the organization, it’s pretty much a sure thing that her fans will be visiting the site that someone they look up to promoted.
The website definitely uses rhetorical appeals to connect to the audience. Pathos and logos are very prominent throughout the website. Pathos is displayed through the use of stories and accompanying photos from homeless youth who at one point were regulars at MFP. The stories take you through the youth’s life—the struggles they faced as children/teenagers, how MFP helped them out, and how they are better off now as adults because of the help they received. Logos is executed through a page on the site dedicated to statistics. Information on this page includes the fact that each year there are nearly 4,000 homeless youth on the streets of LA.
Overall, the website does a nice job at tailoring information to it’s audience. They seem to have taken advantage of the publicity they received at the VMA’s by placing their upcoming events and information on donating in plain sight on the homepage. The use of pathos and logos makes it almost impossible for the information given to not appeal to you in one way or another.
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I think that this is a great way to spread awareness about a public issue, because so many people watch the MTV Music Video Awards and know who Miley Cyrus is. I personally do not look up to her, but I was definitely shocked when I did not see her come up to accept the award. I think that that is what drew people into the whole thing: that element of surprise. People were drawn in and listening because what Miley did was so far from the routine that people felt like they needed to hear what the homeless youth was going to say. If Miley had announced it before people probably would of ignored it because they would have expected it, but because no one did the audience needed to know what was going to happen next.
There is definitely a lot of pathos and logos going on with the stories and the statistics, but the site also tries hard to make the organization look credible. There is a page about the history, starting back 1987 when they packed fifty lunches and walked around Hollywood and fast forwarding to 2014, to the “thriving organization” My Friends Place is today. They talk about their collaborations, lay out their financials for anyone to see, and give a run down of their leadership. It also helps that Miley Cyrus is in their pictures, someone who has millions of followers an is a strong force in today’s pop culture.
Miley Cyrus’s VMA award acceptance definitely increased the awareness of homelessness in LA as well as increased the number of My Friend’s Place donations. Having Miley’s picture on the homepage of the website allows Miley fans to have a connection to the organization. I really enjoyed watching the 25th Anniversary video because though they used Pathos by appealing to the audience’s emotion, the producers highlighted the positive aspects of the organization and how they’ve improved the lives of so many children in LA.
Miley is known for her crazy music, videos, and style, so I was pleasantly surprised that such a positive event has been tied to her. What she did at the MTV Video Music Awards was very unique and admirable. She has millions of adoring fans, and she now has positively influenced them to help out in the community instead of encouraging reckless behavior like some of her songs do. The kairos was perfect for Miley to show her support for My Friend’s Place, because she was in front of such a large audience and the event was nationally televised. My Friend’s Place will absolutely benefit from the publicity and will probably ride out the attention as long as possible. On their home page is a photo of Miley, which shows that her being associated with the organization brings them much more attention. This will change the lives of many homeless youth in California, and for that Miley deserves some credit and praise.