The KONY 2012 video has
clocked more than 70 million views in only a few days on YouTube (and millions
more since appearing on Vimeo
two weeks ago), which is fairly amazing considering it’s about something most
people have never heard of and it’s a half-an-hour long. (The average viral
video on YouTube is two minutes or less.) This earnest effort to bring Ugandan
warlord Joseph Kony to justice and free the thousands of “invisible children”
that he has abducted and pressed into soldiering and sex-slavery has clearly
captured our attention.
IC embraces of the virality of social media
to get their message across. Feature by feature, from the like counter to the
new timeline, KONY 2012 shows how Facebook can be used to engineer social
change. What happens if this
effort succeeds? Will foreign policy be guided by social media fiat? Suffice to
say, even the harshest critics acknowledge the group’s good intentions. And in
terms of their use of media, they clearly know what they are doing (or else
this current debate would not even exist.)
So what can social media startups, and
practitioners of social media of all sorts, learn from KONY 2012? Here are 12
lessons in the order that they appear in the video (with time markers for easy
reference):
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.”
4. 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].
5. 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 dispair at living and the murder of
his brother [7:14]. It’s manipulative, yes, but boy does it work.
6. 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].
7. 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.”
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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!)
What’s most impressive about KONY 2012 is the
craft of all the pieces of their campaign: the mechanics, framing, film making,
graphic design, the web sites, the Facebook page, Twitter hashtags, you name it. Will they make Kony “world news”?
They already have.
