#KONY2012

As of March 19, 2012 the Kony 2012 video has been seen over 100 million times. It is one of the most viral videos on YouTube. The video, created by the Invisible Children organization strives to educate people about the situation in Uganda and the use of children soldiers. Joseph Kony is the leader of the LRA, a rebel group in Uganda. Children have been kidnapped for years where boys are forced to become soldiers and girls turned into sex slaves. The crimes committed by Joseph Kony landed him at the top of the list of most wanted criminals wanted by the International Criminal Court.

Although the organization went to Washington to try to lobby support in going into Uganda, most government officials said no because there is nothing at stake for the USA nor will there be anything for the USA to gain out of it. It was just not an important foreign policy issue. To drum up support for the cause, the video was shown to many people as possible and they were shocked and what they had seen An online communities was built to help build awareness of the video and what is going on in Uganda.

Many people were coming from Uganda to the USA to help tell their story to audiences. Groups of young people help to fund putting the campaign together. With the campaign become more high-profile, many U.S. politicians helped to drum up support and President Obama ordered 100 troops to act as advisors to be sent to Uganda. Kony eventually found out that the United States had a presence in Uganda and were attempting to help capture him. Kony has changed his tactics and made finding him more difficult. International support may wind down because of the complex operation and the lack of funds available to carry out the operations. It has been feared that if there is not enough support at home in the USA to carry on the deployment of these special advisors in Uganda then the deployment would be cancelled.

To drum up further support for the campaign Invisible Children, Joseph Kony’s name was going to be turned into a “celebrity” so that people are aware of who Joseph Kony is. This was going to be done by targeting 20 culture makers and 12 policy makers to use their power to help spread the awareness of the campaign to a mass audience. April 20, 2012 “Cover the Night” – people will post hundreds of thousands of posters worldwide demanding justice be done and capture Kony.

The technology that is bringing people together can be used to respond to the problems going on in the world. This is social media for the use of good. At the end of the video people are asked to make a donation to TRI, order the action kit, sign the petition by to also share the video with other people.

Now that Kony 2012 is probably the most famous viral video ever, what lessons can we learn from this?

1.How to handle criticism/bad PR

• The video does not really explain too much about Kony himself
• Many people have been criticizing the organization for how much it cost to make the video, how most of the  donations went towards the video and not helping the actual cause
• Negative publicity is surrounding Jason Russell – was arrested for lewd behaviour – bringing in bad press
• Ugandan government had to do its own PR damage control by releasing a video saying that they know Kony is not in the country and that they are doing what they can to find him.

2. Marketers can learn how influential communities are.

• Word of the video spread around communities as they discussed about the video and shared it with others and it just constantly spread with all the sharing
• Marketers need to know where to find these communities!
• Marketers need to find and persuade the influential people in social media and gain their support so they can help market your product/service
• By incorporating the use of social media heavily, awareness for this campaign spread like a wildfire. Charities can learn a lesson from the Kony 2012 campaign and take notes to what and what not to do. Although there was an extremely high budget for this video, charities can work within their budget and use social media tools because it’s not very costly and a wider audience can be reached and in a time effective manner as well.

Why was this video successful?

1. The message was plain and simple.

Joseph Kony must be stopped and captured to help stop what he has been doing in Uganda and surrounding countries for decades, killing people and kidnapping children to be soldiers and sex slaves.

2.    The most viewed by group according to the YouTube stats are:

Female 13-17

Male 18-24

Male 45-54

The video was viewed the most on mobile devices with 30,274,335 views, the video was viewed on Facebook 11,137,976 times and it was referred on Facebook 8,751,040 times. The video was referred 1,311,871 times via Twitter.

Speaking to the youth was how this campaign became a success. As highlighted in the video many youth groups and high school, college and university students quickly became involved in the cause. Young people are the most influential group amongst all age groups because they have the power and influence to make or break ad campaigns. They have the money and ability to decide if what is being sold to them worth their time and money.

3. Visuals!

The video was just over 30 minutes long, but with the visuals and narration helped to make this documentary interesting and interested in watching it from start to finish. It is preferred to keep videos under 10 minutes and to the point otherwise you will lose your viewer if you don’t make it an attractive video to watch.