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