Kony 2012

     Invisible children’s Kony 2012 campaign has been one of the most successful campaigns using social media in history. If you don’t know what this is about, you can watch the video they wanted to spread and an explanation of their objective: make Joseph Kony (the world’s worst war criminal) famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice. In this case, notoriety translates to public support. If people know about the crimes that Kony has been committing for 26 years, they will unite to stop him. Secondly, we want Kony to be famous so that when he is stopped, he will be a visible, concrete example of international justice. Then other war criminals will know that their mass atrocities will not go unnoticed or unpunished. (www.kony2012.com)

     Invisible children used this video to make their message circulate on the Internet as a typical viral marketing campaign. Although the most important is the cause for the one they are fighting for, to the one we give all our support from Viral Marketing Blog, we are going to analyze this phenomena under the marketing point of view: as an excellent example of the way social media has to be used.

     Althoug the campaign is still current, it’s a long time since it started to spread in the Internet.  But it’s now the best moment to take into account it’s results; it’s impact.

     Anthony Wing, a Forbes contributor, proposes 12 lessons that social media can learn from Knoy 2012 (Link to the original article: www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/03/09/12-lessons-from-kony-2012-from-social-media-power-users/):

• Be Positive: The first part of the video just shows people connecting with each other, the birth of a baby, the pride of parenthood and the value of friendship. Joseph Kony doesn’t even appear until 8:46.

• Get Their Attention: Early on [1:38] the voiceover tells you, “The next 27 minutes are an experiment. But in order for it to work, you have to pay attention.” A bit presumptuous, but you’ve been warned.

• Make It Personal: At 1:55 we see a child being born in what looks like an American hospital, and by 2:39 we understand the identity of the voiceover and the baby: ”My name is Jason Russell and this is my son, Gavin.”

• Invoke the Mainstream Media: KONY 2012 is peppered with references to “old media” for validation. ”This has been going on for years?” Russell says on camera in Uganda. “If that happened one night in America it would be on the cover of Newsweek.” [5:56] There’s and a fake TIME cover of Kony that reads “Worst in the World,” next to a real TIME cover of supporter George Clooney [23:35] and a fabricated New York Times front page that reads “KONY CAPTURED” [22:27].

• Pull the Heartstrings: Russell uses his son, Gavin, and his young Ugandan friend, Jacob, for raw plays on emotion: Jacob’s is introduced through Gavin’s pointing to picture on wall and saying, “Jacob is our friend in Africa” [3:56]; Jacob is the first thing you see on the Invisible Children’s Facebook timeline [4:00]; Jacob breaks down in wailing sobs when discussing his despair at living and the murder of his brother [7:14]. It’s manipulative, yes, but boy does it work.

• Make it Time Sensitive: At 8:40 the screen announces, “Expires December 31, 2012.”  There is no explanation in the video of what that means, or what the benefit would be of the video being vaporized from the internet at the stroke of midnight, but the expiration date is clearly meant to convey a sense of immediacy. The theme song also reinforces the sense of compulsion with the refrain, “I Can’t Stop” [26.52].

• Make It Simple: In what is perhaps the video’s greatest coup (and also, perhaps, its undoing) we see five-year-old Gavin’s reactions to father’s explanation of who Joseph Kony is and what the war’s about [9:19]. The “bad guy” forces these children to do “bad things” against their will. How does he feel about that? “Sad.”

• Make It Real (Briefly): After he explains Kony to his son in a simplified manner, he gives the grownups a bit more detail. “Kony abducts kids just like Gavin,” we are told [10:50]. “For 26 years Kony has been kidnapping children into his rebel group the LRA, turning the girls into sex slave and the boys into child soldiers. He makes them mutilate people’s faces.” We see a rapid fire slideshow of ten horrifically slashed faces. “And he forces them to kill their own parents.” OK, I get the point, really bad guy.

• Give it Scale: “And this is not a few children. It has been over 30,000 of them.” We zoom out from a closeup of a few Ugandan children to a crowd of thousands. [11:39] Similarly, the point of the video is to get Kony’s name and picture in front of millions of people around the world through hundreds of thousands of posters, stickers and (since it’s election time) lawn signs.

• Use Celebrities: IC has identified 20 “culture makers” and 12 “policy makers” to “target” to help get the word out (20 + 12, get it?) [23:16]. The 20 culture makers run the psychographic gamut: Oprah, Mark Zuckerberg, Lady GaGa, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Bill O’Reilly, Bill Gates, Jay-Z, Justin Bieber, Rick Warren, Ellen Degeneres, Ben Affleck, Rihanna, Stephen Colbert, Warren Buffet, Taylor Swift, Ryan Seacrest, Tim Tebow, Rush Limbaugh(!) and Bono. The 12 policy makers cant somewhat to the right: George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Harry Reid, John Boehner, Kay Granger, Mitt Romney, Stephen Harper, Ban Ki-Moon, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Patrick Leahy. Although Clooney appears on camera, it is unclear what the rest of these people’s relationship is to IC, though their visual inclusion does imply a certain assumed validation.

• Create Events: The video wheels out poster artist (and now convicted criminal) Shepard Fairey to say, “Here are these really simple tools. Go out and rock it.” [25:00] This sets up the major focus of this viral video effort, to get people to sign up and receive “action kits” to be used on the night of April 20th for an overnight postering session called “Cover the Night.” [26:36] Widely publicized public vandalism in the name of political change is not the kind of event every social media entity would choose, but it seems to fit the ethos of this group. The fresh faced activists in the video seem to be unconcerned that some of their wheat pasting might be considered vandalism, but so be it.

• Make It Easy: The video ends with the obligatory call to action: “The better world we want is coming. It’s just waiting for us to stop at nothing. There are three things you can do right now.” [29:25] “1. Sign the pledge to show your support” (that’s easy) “2. Get the bracelet and the action kit” (how?) “3. Sign up for Tri to donate a few dollars a month” (oh, that’s easy too) BUT, when you click on the donate button there’s a message below the donation options that says, “A minimum monthly commitment of $15 is required to receive the Kony 2012 Action Kit with your TRI membership. Due to the overwhelming response to KONY 2012 your kit delivery is not guaranteed before April 20th.” Not quite the same the “few dollars a month” they keep referring to in the video! And if you don’t sign up for the monthly plan you can’t order a kit a la carte. You can, however, download and print kit materials for free (easy!)