Below is the video that highlights the interview with Mido DeSanti, founder of Pixhug, at the Entertainment and Technology Summit in Los Angeles. In this interview, Mido explains what Pixhug is all about.
Pixhug is a social change platform that connects social media with social responsibility. The Pixhug App turns likes into donations, giving everyone the power to make a difference simply by sharing and liking photos. Every photo posted on Pixhug or Facebook with the Pixhug App supports a humanitarian campaign, and every “Like” converts into a 10-cent donation from a corporate sponsor. Pixhug turns “slacktivism” into activism by giving photos and likes purpose. By utilizing the potential of social media and photo-sharing to do good, Pixhug turns social media users into philanthropists.
The platform delivers visibility to corporate donations and successfully builds brand equity in an extremely crowded digital advertising space by bringing brands, charities, and social media users together. Driven by celebrity ambassadors and notable partnerships, the viral effect of their posts has gained the attention of major charities and corporations.
Pixhug is a Vancouver-based firm with an office in Los Angeles. The iOS app is accessible in the App Store.
A few other sites and profiles about Pixhug Media that you may interested to check:
Announcing mobilizing social media for social good and brand power with Mido Desanti founder and CEO of Pixhug and Variety's Andrew Wallenstein.
Andrew: Thank you Mido thanks for joining us today to talk about a really interesting venture in Pixhug, which Mido going to help us get int. But you know just to understand the broad strokes: Pixhug is a social philanthropy app that amplifies fundraising efforts on behalf of consumers, charities, and of course brands. It does this in a really fascinating way on social platforms . So walk us through how this works?
Mido: So we built Pixhug really to empower individuals that want to drive change in the world that don't necessarily have the means. To do that, we wanted to do something that's very simple. We don't want to reinvent social media. I think Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat these guys are great at what they do, but we wanted to do is to add purpose in those user engagements. To do that, we had to keep things really really simple. We decided to use as a vehicle for social good or photographs and with them in Pixhug we talk often about that all saying that a picture tells a thousand words is worth a thousand words but why not be a thousand blankets or a thousand meals and that's exactly what happens when someone posts a photograph to Pixhug. When one logs into our app and it's great now available on iOS and and five to six weeks in Android or you have all these campaigns that are currently running and you can pick one of the causes that you wish to support you login with Facebook and you post a photograph and that's all it takes that photograph takes a life of its own in a way because we collect those likes we paired them with ten cents from a corporate sponsor and you just see the money roll in and and how you can benefit that charity without actually spending any of your money.
Andrew: So each like represents sort of like a converted currency for check?
Mido: Correct. Each like is actually a tangible donation.
Andrew: Right I mean I think prior to hearing about Pixhug my only idea of how social and charity came together with something like ice bucket challenge how or how did you guys come up with this? Give us the origins here?
Mido: Well I think there are a couple of things came together on one end we saw billions of likes that are happening every day on Facebook and we wanted to see how can we add a little bit of purpose or meaning behind those likes. At the same time, we looked at brands that give 20 billion dollars every single year and get very little visibility for it. And on the third end, we looked at charities and sow the lack of transparency and how much do we know about a charitable work and how the money is being utilized and so we wanted to put everything together. And we built Pixhug like a kind of brings transparency in one and empowers people to be the vehicle behind the donations and brands to achieve greater visibility because for a thousand dollar donation they reach 10,000 people because it's been ten cents per like.
Andrew: Got it. Let's talk about what we've got up on the screen here with you.
Mido: That's a fantastic example so we launched this only three weeks ago right and the power young Hollywood it went well variety we had some of the youngest stars and influence digital influences like Jaden Smith like Anthony Motor and Cameron Dallas. And he chose make-a-wish foundation here in LA and his one post generated 35,000 reactions of 35,000 people within hours reacted to his post and you about both the nation that Variety has done and the actual work that make-a-wish dozen in Los Angeles. We were ourselves actually quite surprised at what happened when these fans all of a sudden became engaged and they became a part of this journey more than just spectators. They were part of it. It was because of them that they actually achieved as the donation and the visibility that both entities got was tremendous and within a few hours three and a half thousand dollars donated.
Andrew: That is tremendous and you know this is for a great cause but I’m also curious about the monetization here what do you guys as a company had. How do you make your money?
Mido: Well one of the first things that we are set in the company was we did not want to take a cut from the charities. We want to amplify how they utilize the bunny racer that's our goal in that end but how Pixhug is a business or social business is we want to look for value that we can add to the brand and to the visibility that we give them we are able to charge them a marketing fee that never exceeds ten percent of the actual donation.
Andrew: Okay so we've got this Cameron Diaz example. Can you give us some more ideas of charities, brands, and individuals that have been using this yet?
Mido: And yeah we have this fantastic partnership with the White Feather Foundation that was founded by a Julian Lennon several years ago and the ability to because when you look at Julian Lennon who has been out of the spotlight for many years and has focused really more on his photography on another foundations work . His foundation has been able to raise thousands of dollars as well within days it reached so much more people that he hasn't been able to reach out to he is reaching a different demographic now because our average is looking over seventy percent of our users are between 18 and 27. Right and that's really was out of his demographic and now we have campaigns that are in Burkina Faso. We have a fantastic project in Ethiopia for girls education and we constantly have these campaigns that keep updating so every week we add new ones and one of the cool things that we're looking into is when you have natural disasters and something that nobody expects to see we want to be able to be the first go-to app that you can help and bring results and bring aid to certain areas that needed quickly.
Andrew: So that's something you intend to do or you've already tried?
Mido: That’s what we were working on right now. Yeah so I think I mean hopefully not natural disasters happen but I think that's how it is and they think within five weeks we'll be ready to support them.
Andrew: So you're out now for several weeks and curious how do you see the Pixhug product evolving? Will it go to different platforms working different ways?