Top Five Creative Viral Campaigns

Here are my top 5 viral campaigns that have generated significant word of mouth exposure for their brands due to being highly creative.

Kit Kat And Jesus 

Probably one of the most creative viral campaigns that ticks all the boxes.  

In 2009 there were three separate sightings of Jesus that occurred throughout Europe. Kit Kat picked up on this and planned to leverage this phenomenon by planning their own Jesus sighting.  A day before Easter in 2010 Kit Kat sent an email to the two largest Dutch news sites from a fictitious person, who claimed to have seen the face of Jesus in his Kit Kat, after taking a bite. As proof of his story he attached two pictures. The Dutch news site published the story immediately. After four days more than 150.000 sites published the story.  This then promoted a wave of word of mouth social media comments that promoted the brand, such as’ ‘have a break, have a Jesus Kit Kat’, even JC needs a break’.

Oreo At The Super Bowl 

Oreo's social media team worked quickly during the third quarter of the 2013 Super Bowl when a power outage at the Raven’s versus 49ers game at the Superdome caused the lights to go out for 34minutes. 

Wasting no time and thinking creatively they jumped into action and tweeted an ad with this caption “You Can Still Dunk In The Dark?"

Since then, it’s been retweeted more than 14,000 times and Facebook has received more than 20,000 likes. This a hugely powerful bit of marketing not only because of the brand equity it built, but because it occurred during the advertising industry’s most expensive day – all for free. 

Lipton Milk Tea And Chinese New Year

This campaign is a great example of what happens with something goes viral in China.  In  2010 to celebrate Chinese New Year, AKQA and Lipton Milk Tea created a viral campaign that they launched on China’s biggest IM and social networking site QQ.

The campaign featured a website where people would select one of three videos (shot in first person) they were able to personalise their selected video and then send to a friend along with adding a special Chinese New Year greeting. The message was received in a red box which made is even more special when the recipient opened the online message.  When opened the box revealed a hot steaming cup of Lipton Milk Tea that then revealed a special message. The results were enormous with over 100 million people sending or watching the videos.  Shows what you can do with a bit of creativity and deep customer insight!

Vail Ski Resort And EpicMix

Vail Resort wanted to combine the outdoor lifestyle experience of skiing with social networking.  They did this through launching EpicMix, a one-of-a-kind online and mobile app that connected skiers with their friends and family on the mountain, allowing them to share stories, pictures and their achievements while they were out for the day skiing.

EpicMix enabled to generate strong word of mouth for Vail Resort in three ways. RFID technology embedded into the season passes and lift passes allowed passive check-ins so riders could learn about their skiing travels, i.e.  how many vertical feet they travelled, how far and where they actually travelled. Second, by allowing riders to earn 'pins' for a variety of achievements, EpicMix became a game that motivated and challenged riders in a fun and interactive way. Finally EpicMix being a free web and mobile application enabled riders to share their days experiences and photos easily.  Users could log on or use a smartphone to access their account, see their status, add friends from Facebook, create an EpicMix family, send messages and see where friends or family was on the mountain.

EpicMix went live in December 2010 and since then over 100,000 guests have activated an account.  As well EpicMix has generated more than 35million social impressions.

Age-o-matic campaign

Online games work to build strong brand impressions. The Age-o-matic campaign was created by CareerBuilder to show people how staying in the wrong job would age them.  They created a clever tool called ‘The Age-o-Matic” and launched it virally - targeting people who hated their jobs. 

The Age-o-matic online game invited people to upload a photo and then asked them to answer a number of questions to highlight how much they hated their job.  The Age-o-matic aged the picture to show how that person would look if they stayed in their job.

The online game cost US$200,000 to build and nothing to promote it as it was promoted all through word of mouth online activity.  It garnered 50 million media impressions in one month and enjoyed 2 million unique visitors, who spend 4 minutes on average with the tool.

Coming next

How to avoid negative word of mouth

Ten Tips For Word-Of-Mouth Success

Can you influence people talking about you?

Top ten tips to drive word-of-mouth success

1. Listen and learn:  If you are about to launch a new product, work with a small group of followers to develop your product further. Listen and learn from them to perfect your product prior to its launch.
2. Be interesting, by being interested:  Take an active interest in your customers - get to know them.  Deepen your understanding by getting your ear to the ground, so to speak, and listening to the conversations that they are having about you and your competitors. 
3. Act:   Develop customer-orientated initiatives. Engage your customers by getting them to actively involved in co-creating their own product features. Build a personalised customer experience - that reflects your brand identity and touches as many senses as possible.  Try not to be contrived. Your initiatives’ must look genuine.
   
4. Test your environment: Only launch your product when the environment is right.  Don’t just say ‘she’ll be right’ and hope for the best. Launch your product on a small scale and if it doesn't work as yourselves - is the environment right for us to launch this now.
5. Be creative:  Creativity is vital for creating a buzz.  Marketing is all about creativity so think out-side-the-box and do something that’s a little left field.  With 20% of brand conversations influenced by advertising (Keller, 2007) and social media platforms at your fingertips there is no excuse not too. 
   
6. Protect your brand’s credibility: Understand your brand and think carefully about the consequences and risks of launching your campaign.  Develop a robust post campaign plan to mitigate risks to your brand.  Remember you are never fully in control of word of mouth – therefore being disciplined about developing post launch plans is key for you to stay in control. 
7. Develop the right message and media strategy: Think about where your product is in its lifecycle and who's your customer.   
   
   If you are launching a new product or service target the message to ‘early adopters’ and appeal to their need for scarcity. Develop a media strategy that keeps your product discrete and exclusive. If your product is targeting the ‘early majority’, focus your message on social proofing, i.e. ‘join the thousands who are now enjoying this great new product’. Develop a media strategy that generates mass exposure, i.e. high reach through a creative viral campaign, facebook (likes) or maybe mass media if you have the budget.
8. Keep your brand visible:  People mostly talk about mundane things, so keeping your brand ‘top of mind’ will keep you in their topic of conversation.
   
9. Start thinking conversations:  Change your mindset and stop thinking campaigns and start talking conversations.
10. Understand ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘where’.  Understand who can influence your customers and then build team of influencers that are trusted by your customers. Understand what is important to your customer. For word of mouth to have an impact the message must address a person’s core functional needs. Where - develop networks that your customers trust - messages that are circulated within trusted networks have less reach but greater impact than those circulated through a dispersed community.
11. Measure & evaluate:  Word of mouth is not often thought about in marketing plans let alone measured and evaluated.  Develop a way to measure your word of mouth activity so you can evaluate its success and learn which activities have a better ROI than others. By looking at volume and then impact, either negative or positive you can start to measure the effects of word of mouth messages more accurately.  Then you can start to assess which campaigns are having a greater, more positive impact than others.  This will provide you with a wealth of information that will improve your word of mouth performance over-time. 

The above exhibit is an adaptation of the McKinsey’s word of mouth equity framework.

"The rewards of pursuing excellence in word of mouth marketing are huge, and it can deliver a sustainable and significant competitive edge few other marketing approaches can match" (McKinsey, 2010). 

Harness The Power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

We all do it…. develop elaborate marketing plans that allocate thousands or millions of dollars to integrated promotional activities and forget about the one thing that is FREE and the biggest factor that influences product purchases – word of mouth marketing.

I’ll explain how marketers can use it to influence consumer behaviour to increase your competitive advantage.  These insights have been extracted from ‘A new way to measure word-of-mouth marketing’ by Bughin, Doogan and Vetvik, (2010). 

According to research WOM is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchase decisions. Research also shows ‘influencers’ typically generate three times more WOM impact on recipients purchasing decision; with around 1% of ‘influencers’ using digital avenues, the most notably being bloggers.

The below chart shows how WOM influences consumers at any stage of their decision journey. Compounding this is the digital revolution, which has taken WOM conversation to a new level of power.

To understand how you can use word of mouth to influence consumers you have to understand the primary drivers.

Driver 1 - volume of recommendations

The volume of word of mouth recommendations seems a relatively obvious driver of consumer behaviour - the more recommendations the better for your brand or product. But, volume really only works when the right person is sending the word of mouth message.

Driver 2 – who is making the recommendation (who)

Who the sender of the WOM message plays a big part in influencing a WOM receiver’s purchase decision.  The greater the WOM receiver trusts or believes the WOM influencer has competence in the area they are talking about, the more powerful the WOM message is on influencing their purchase decision.  

Driver 3 – the message content (what)

What the influencer says is a primary driver of the impact of word of mouth.  Research shows that the content of the message must address important product or service features if it is to influence consumer decision. Whilst advertising is often built around an emotional positioning, for WOM to have an impact the messages must address core functional needs.

Driver 4 – the network where they are talking (where)

Messages that are circulated within trusted networks have less reach but greater impact than those circulated through a dispersed community. This is why ‘old-fashioned’ kitchen table recommendations or online communities remain so important.

Harness word-of-mouth to beat your competition.

With very few companies actively managing word of mouth marketing, developing a WOM plan has the potential to deliver a sustainable and significant competitive advantage.

Here is a guide to help your business give you a competitive advantage using WOM.

Step 1 – understand which drivers (who, what or where) of word of mouth are most important to your product category. For example for health insurance category ‘who’ is most important and the skin care category it is the ‘what’. 

Step 2 - Once you understand what type of driver is the most important then you can tailor positive word of mouth in these three ways.

Experiential – is the most common and powerful form of word of mouth – it’s the experience somebody has (either positive or negative) that generates a story. Harnessing experiential word of mouth is fundamentally facilitating opportunities where people can share their positive experiences.  Things you can do to increase experiential word of mouth.

• build a buzz around a product prior to it launching
• engage ‘influences’ (that have trust and competence within your category) to blog about your product
• consistently refresh the functional product features and relaunch them using online chat forums and blogs.

To create positive word of mouth that generates a buzz the customer experience must exceed customer’s expectations on the dimensions that matter most to them – so they then feel inclined to talk about it.  

“To turn customers into an effective marketing vehicle, companies need to out perform on product and service attributes that have intrinsic word of mouth potential,” say Bughin et al.

Consequential – is the word of mouth generated from the company generated marketing activities.  This requires marketing to monitor the effects of marketing activities and the word of mouth it generates. Research shows that marketing-induced consumer-to-consumer word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising. For low innovation categories – adopting ‘highly creative tactics’ greatly facilitates word of mouth.

This chair by Nike is a great example of developing a highly creative tactic to get people talking about their brand.

Intentional – is marketing activities driven from celebrity endorsements or key influencers who become brand or product advocates. Red Bull is a company that deploys this activity well. This below video of their sponsorship of the Wake Open Ambassador Day is a great example.  They identify key influential’s amongst different target segments and then ensures that celebrities and other opinion makers see the right messages among consumers, often through their sponsored events.

Bughin J., Doogan J., Vetvik O., (2010), ‘A new way to measure word-of-mouth marketing’, McKinsey Quarterly April 2010

What the HELL is social media - in 2 minutes

Stop thinking 'campaigns' and start thinking 'conversations'. Social media is a great platform to get the conversation started.

Get Your Customer's Talking

WOM secrets to success

With marketing budget’s shrinking, growing pressure to win more customers and more people networking through social media, WOM is a critical strategy to have in your marketing mix.  But, what strategies can you adopt to increase customer’s talking about your brand.  In my earlier blogs I looked at a number of successful WOM campaigns that have enabled companies to reach the tipping point.

The key take-outs from these campaigns were:

• Get a few people of a particular set of social skill involvement in spreading the word first. Provide opportunities for influences to have a conversation on behalf of your brand. This could be as simply as an online forum for selected customers, like E.L James did to develop her 50 Shades of Grey story line.
• Release content that is highly creative that’s aligned to your audience’s interests. Creative content will increase the stickiness factor and render the content memorable.
• Launch your product when you know your market it ready to adopt the new idea.

Today I’d like to give you a few more simple strategies to get customers talking about your brand immediately and ongoing.  These tips are based on research conducted by Berger and Johan in 2011. 

Tip 1 – how to drive up immediate WOM.

Research shows that products that offer more interest to customers will receive more immediate WOM than products that don’t.  

Be interesting by being interested in your customers

Following this philosophy will help you keep your product interesting and increase immediate WOM for your brand. Do you think Starbucks in the US became so popular because of their $4.00 lattes? No they became popular because they offered customers a unique product as well as a customerised experience. This intense focus on their customers drove interest and talk about their brand. It’s a shame they haven’t been able to continue that level of customer interest as their brand has grown globally.

Another way to drive interest in your brand is by launching innovative promotional activities. A company that is famous for this style of WOM promotional activity is Red Bull. Red Bull embraces its brand vision, ‘Red Bull gives people wings’ through ever thing it does. This translates into a company that pushes the boundaries of what’s possible.  An example of how they met this philosophy and increased WOM significantly was their sponsorship of the Red Bull Stratos space diving project, which involved Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner going into the stratosphere before free falling in a pressure suit and then parachuting to Earth. Alone the You Tube video of the Felix Baumgartner’s freefall to date has received 34 million views.

Click here for You Tube video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHtvDA0W34I

Tip 2 – driving ongoing WOM.

Research shows that whilst people want to talk about interesting things, in reality people’s conversations revolve around things that are mundane and day-to-day. This means that the products people mostly talk about are those that are publicly visible, i.e. those that spring to mind.  Therefore, if you want your product to be talked about, you must make it visible to your target market.

An example of this is Red Bull progressive marketing activities. To keep their brand visible they push their brand forward by engaging social and digital media and centering their customers at the heart of their promotional campaigns. Red Bull uses innovative marketing techniques to listen and react to their audience in relevant and engaging ways.

Tip 3 – driving immediate and ongoing WOM.

Research shows that products that are cued to the environment are more likely to increase WOM. A great example of this is the campaign launched by Michelob beer in 1978, “The Weekend’s are made for Michelob beer”. Michelob beer launched a campaign that link the weekend with their beer using social media as a platform. This commercial demonstrates a simple and effective why to build a strong connection between a product and consumer activity Michelob beer and consuming over the weekend break and drive up relevant WOM conversation about your product. 

Whilst thinking up environmental clues that work with the type of product you have this is an extremely effective strategy to adopt and worthwhile putting time into developing a number of good environmental marketing ideas to test.

Michelob Beer 'Weekends' Commercial (1978)

Click here for the commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1uaCmBXrU

Berger, Johan (2011), What Drives Immediate and Ongoing Word of Mouth, retrieved from, http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/ehost

Creativity a must for viral success

Creativity is critical for advertising because it has the power to engage and motivate people. 

Therefore, when planning a viral campaign creativity is a critical ingredient to drive success.

The problem with creativity it is highly subjective, making it hard to evaluate.  

Picture this…. your advertising agency pitches a BIG IDEA to you, your marketing team and your Chief Executive Officer.  They say, “this is a big creative idea that we think will be hugely successful”.  

But you're not sure.... it's really an 'out there' concept.  

But, your boss doesn't like it and wants to reject the idea!

Do you - reject the idea because, after all your boss is right? Or do you evaluate it against a set of criteria and convince your boss that according to this criteria it is the right way to proceed?  Hopefully the later! In reality lots of companies proceed with advertising based on personal judgement.  

So what can you do to make sure this doesn't happen to you?

Let’s have a look at three highly successful campaigns that have generated millions of views.  For this purpose I have used audience reach as the key indicator of success.  Then I'll evaluate the ads using an advertising creativity predictive model developed by Stuhlfaut and Yoo, (2013). The model establishes that advertising creativity has four dimensions: novelty, affective, utility and humorous and a unique set of 15 characteristics.

Lets see how they stack up….

1. Three highly successful viral campaigns

  Dynamite Surfing (Quiksilver)

• With a reputed 10 million views a couple of months after the launch this viral advert for Quiksilver took the web by storm and did more to promote the brand than all their other advertising combined.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR_naKxLEPc

    Test Your Awareness: Whodunnit? (TFL cycling safety)

• In just 3 months over 3.8 million people viewed this video making it one of the top viral campaigns of 2008.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubNF9QNEQLA

 Cadbury’s Gorilla

• Another recent great example of a highly successful viral campaign was Cadbury’s. 2007 ad featuring the gorilla playing the drums and has been seen by over 7 million viewers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzFRV1LwIo

2. Introducing the advertising creativity evaluation tool

Just to give you some background to the tool I am using.  In 2013 Stuhlfaut et al., conducted research into advertising creativity and developed a tool to evaluate advertising concepts.  Their research showed that highly creative advertising had four dimensions – novelty, utility, affect and humour and 15 characteristics.

• Novelty is measured by being original, imaginative, innovating, unique, new, surprising.
• Affective is measured by whether is emotionally engaging and likable.
• Utility is measured by whether the advertising is meaningful, persuasive, relevant, and strategic and memorable.
• And the final dimension is whether the ad is humorous. 

 3. The evaluation! 

I evaluated each ad and assessed it against Stuhlfaut et at’s., characteristics that predict advertising creativity.  For simplicity I placed a “Y” in the box if I believed the ad met the criteria of that characteristic.

As you can see by the results below each ad shared a number of similar characteristics, namely: imaginative, unique, surprising, likeable, meaningful, persuasive, relevant, strategic and memorable.

What’s more interesting, is that ‘Dynamic Surfing’ attracted the largest number of views and also hit the largest number of predictive characteristics.  The least successful of the three ads being, ‘Do the Test’, only managed to achieve 9 out of the 15 predictive characteristics.  However that was still enough to generate a significant result.

4. The insight

Creativity is a critical component for a viral advertising campaign to be successful.  You can predict, and or evaluate, the success of your viral campaign by using Stuhlfaut et al’s., creative advertising predictive model. 

So next time you are developing a creative brief or assessing a campaign consider using this great, simple predictive creative advertising model. 

Your campaign will surely be a viral hit!

Stuhlfaut M. W. and Chan Y Yoo., (2013), "A tool for evaluating advertising concepts: desirable characteristics as viewed by creative practitioners", Journal for Marketing Communications, 17 (1), 1-17.

Get Your Brand To The Tipping Point

An Insight Into Maloney’s 16% Rule

My last two blogs have proven that word of mouth along is powerful enough to drive a brand to the tipping point.  But I have been intrigued about why some campaigns work so well and then some fail miserably. 

Of course Malcolm Gladwells states all you need to do is follow these three characteristics:

1. The law of the few – according to Gladwell success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of a few people with a particular set of social gifts. 
2. The stickiness factor – the content must render the impact memorable.
3. The power of context – epidemics only work when the environment is right.

But I can’t help but feel there must be more to it. Further research has enabled me to understand how you can strategically plan an extraordinary word of mouth viral campaign to get your brand to the tipping point.

Let me share some great insights I have found using Maloney’s 16% rule. 

Firstly, Maloney looks at the ‘Diffusion of Innovation Adoption Curve’ (developed by Everett Rogers as seen here) and two best selling authors theories, Geoffrey Moore and Malcolm Gladwell.

Geoffrey Moore’s famous book and theory, ‘Crossing the Chasm’ begins with the Roger’s ‘Diffusion of Innovation’ theory and argues there is a chasm between the ‘early adopters’ of the product and the ‘early majority’. Moore claims that these segments have different psychological profiles and needs, which creates the ‘chasm’ that marketers must recongnise.  On the other hand Malcolm Gladwell looks at getting over the chasm to the tipping point by following the three characteristics as outlined above.

Let’s now look at this in more detail

Point 1: Early adopters and early majority don’t get along

Basically ‘early adopters’ and ‘early majority’ are different people – and really don’t get on.  ‘Early adopters’ see themselves as visionaries and have a strong desire to have things before anybody else.  They are driven by ‘exclusivity’, ‘uniqueness’ and ‘individualism’.  This is why Gladwell claims you have to market to a few to make the product seem exclusive and special. “Early majority’ on the other hand are pragmatists, they like to see people using the product before they do.  They require social proof of its acceptability before they jump in to buy it.  They are driven by ‘social confirmation’, ‘a sense of group belong’ and ‘uniformity’.

Point 2: Creators and Critics don’t exactly get along, but they need each other to exist and grow

Maloney also found an interesting crossover after researching 'Groundswell' by Forrester Research, in which they identify six Social Technographics, as shown here. 

Forrester Research shows at around the 15% mark of adoption, ‘creators’ are faced with ‘critics’. Similarly to ‘early adopters’ and ‘early majority’, ‘creators’ and ‘critics’ don’t exactly get along, but they need each other to exist and grow.  This point was demonstrated so clearly in the success of “Fifty Shades of Grey”.  The book didn’t really explode into full view until the ‘critics, both good and bad’ started to chip in.  That’s what started the debate - which fueled the media frenzy. 

Interestingly, Kony 2012 was similar, but with a twist.  The creators published the content, which then got the attention of the critics.  At first the critics were positive, (young teenagers), which drove the first six days of success.  But then the negative critics (primarily adults) got hold of it and over powered the creators’ message – which resulted in irreparable damage to the Kony 2012 brand.

INSIGHT: AT 16% ADOPTION CHANGE TACK

Maloney’s Rule suggests that once you have reached 16% adoption you must change your message and media strategy.

Tip 1:  Messaging

At the launch of a new product or service target the message to ‘early adopters’ – appeal to their need for scarcity. ‘Be the first to try this new…. ‘

But at the point where the product has 16% of the target population change the message towards targeting ‘early majority’ – which means focus on social proofing. ‘Join the thousands who are now enjoying this great new product’

Try to control the critic’s messages by the creators sending out interesting information that is targeted strategically.  The best result will be if you can generate ‘healthy debate’ that polarises people’s views – but doesn’t undermine the credibility of your brand.

Tip 2:  Media Mix

At the launch keep the product discrete and exclusive, i.e. lead with social media that is highly targeted.  As adoption builds get onboard influencers to generate positive endorsement and encourage social proofing. 

At the point of 16% adoption, in order to cross the chasm you will need to switch to social proofing – which means more mass exposure.  This could be generated through a viral campaign or maybe mass media if you have the budget. 

So it’s now up to you to jump the

‘Chasm’ and reach ‘The Tipping Point’….

KONY 2012, a viral sensation or a viral disaster?

In  2012 Invisible Children, a not for profit organisation launched a 30-minute video aimed at raising awareness and raising funds to stop Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) abducting, killing, and displacing civilians in East and central Africa. 

The KONY 2012 campaign video took a day to hit a million views and six days to reach 100 million.  For days every news outlet on the planet aired the story, every website and blogger had an opinion about the story….  it certainly reached the tipping point in a fast and furious way – and then the talking stopped.

 

I explore three big questions. What caused the KONY 2012 campaign to be word of mouth sensation?  Why did the talking stop so rapidly?  What viral lessons can we learn from this extraordinary story?

 The starting point to the journey….

Invisible Children first encountered the atrocities of Kony and LRA in northern Uganda in 2003 when they met a boy named Jacob who feared for his life and a woman named Jolly who had a vision for a better future. Invisible Children promised Jacob that we would do whatever they could to stop Joseph Kony and the LRA.  Invisible Children was founded in 2004 to fulfill that promise.

The organisation developed a four-part model that focussed exclusively on the LRA conflict to address the problem in its entirety.  Part one of the model, “media” was designed to building awareness and introduce new audiences to the conflict and inspire global action of their cause.

1. What caused the buzz sensation! 

In March 2012, Invisible Children’s put out a 30-minute “documentary” featuring Jacob, the former LRA child soldier and the campaign organizer Jason Russell’s son Gavin.  The video – campaign was highly emotive and engaged the viewer through strong use of live footage and emotive language. Viewers were asked to help an online “experiment” to stop Joseph Kony by making him famous. 

They then used Gladwell’s “law of a few” to start to spread the word.  Prior to the launch they promoted the video to the Invisible Children’s core teenage supporters. This teenage network of 5,000 then used Twitter and Facebook to bombard celebrities with demands for support. What they also used effectively was the use of hashtags such as -  #StopKony and #MakeKonyFamous.  They also targeted key celebrities like Oprah and Kim Kardashian to tweet and spread the buzz.  Well, buzz it did all over the world within a couple of days.

Success was fast and furious!

It became the fastest online video ever to be viewed 100 million times. 3.7 million people pledged their support for efforts to arrest Joseph Kony. Thousands rallied in Washington, DC and the KONY 2012 Global Summit on the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) brought together seven leaders from international institutions and the affected region to talk about what they are doing to stop Joseph Kony and his rebel army.”

The KONY 2012 campaign reached young people in a way no charity had been able to do before.  They connected with young people on a deep an emotional level.  It wasn’t snazzy or trendy.  It was just good old-fashioned story telling, using their medium.

“After seeing the KONY 2012, Sofia spent time sharing the documentary with anyone and everyone – her parents, her friends, her church, and even her school principal. Against the urgings of her parents to stop obsessing over the KONY 2012 campaign, Sofia could not give up her desire to take action. And act she did. Sofia organized a week-long bake sale at her school, got a local church on board, and ended up raising $1,000.27 – all by herself

http://blog.invisiblechildren.com/2013/08/14/supporter-spotlight-sofia-liberti/
Sofia (blue shirt) with her family

Mark Galloway of International Broadcasting Trust says, “KONY 2012 was a charity game-changer.  We heard about this charity from our kids.  That’s how I heard about it, from my teenage son, 48 hours in.  He was like, ‘How come you haven’t heard about the KONY video? I hadn’t, and it was my job”.

The company's CEO Ben Keesey said the impact of KONY 2012 exceeded their "wildest dreams".  "The video had more than 100 million views within six days of launching the campaign," he said. "Our website had nearly half a million unique visitors in a single day; a thousand articles were being published every day about the conflict; and seven of the ten worldwide trending topics on Twitter had to do with KONY 2012 and the LRA. "It was more than we expected, and in some ways it was more than we could handle."

2. Why they talking stopped! 

The backlash from the video was as fast and furious as their initial campaign support.  Questions, primarily from adults were published online about the legitimisy of Invisible Children’s finances.

"Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services, with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production.” (Zoe Fox, Mashable, 2012.  Extract from Tumbler dedicated to evaluating the legitimacy of KONY 2012).

Critics also claimed the “documentary” over simplified the story of Kony's reign of terror and failed to sufficiently note that Kony – a wanted war criminal – and his followers were no longer a force in northern Uganda. Stories, rumours and untruths started to be tweeted and retweeted around the world.  This started to put a dark cloud over the authenticity of Invisible Children’s simple and pure story.  People started to question whether it was just a money grab. A Canadian girl of Ugandan decent uploaded a video film of her response to KONY 2012 in which she says; “Her parents told her Joseph Kony has been dead for years!”

Then, Jason Russell the campaign organizer had a very public meltdown in which in which he was picked up by police while naked and rambling on the streets of San Diego, Jason Russell said his mind "clicked" after weeks of promoting and then defending his campaign against the LRA and its murderous leader, Joseph Kony.

KONY had a big credibility problem!

Invisible Children and any future KONY campaigns would be plagued with credibility issues due to their messages being twisted distorted and manipulated by the multiverse of stories post their March 2012 launch.   On April 2, 2012, Invisible Children released a follow up video, titled KONY 2012: Part II – Beyond Famous, this campaign failed miserably and struggled to get a viral audience.

3. Lessons learnt

There is a scary lesson at the heart of this story.  We are never truly in control of the messages we push out. However, Invisible Children whilst they had a great campaign idea, they launched it without a robust post campaign plan to protect themselves against the PR spin and noise.  

Maybe, just maybe, if they had been more organized with strong arguments to fight the negative backlash, and if Jason Russell had been able to cope with the manic heat that transpired post the launch Invisible Children would have maintained their credibility.  Maybe, the campaign was full of holes and therefore they deserved to lose their credibility.

One thing is for sure…brand credibility is critical to maintain ongoing word of mouth.  Therefore brands that plan to reach the ‘tipping point’ using a viral campaign tactic such as this must think carefully about how people will view and react to their message – and then develop a post campaign plan.  Once a brand’s credibility has been questioned, it is very difficult recover it!

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world-news/remember-kony-2012-well-its-2013-what-happened/story-fndir2ev-1226550575923#ixzz2cHyeWF3X 
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world-news/remember-kony-2012-well-its-2013-what-happened/story-fndir2ev-1226550575923#ixzz2cHxamxXE

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/04/one-year-later-what-happened-to-stopkony.html