After reading Seth Godin’s external marketing blog post entitled “Learning from four viral events” I began to think about the newest Internet sensation known as KONY 2012. If you have been on any sort of social media in the past week, you’ve probably noticed the gargantuan amount of shares and likes that this video has been getting. For those of you who don’t know, KONY 2012 is a video and campaign started by an organization called Invisible Children to make war criminal Joseph Kony “famous.” The whole campaign centers around the video KONY 2012, which is a half an hour-long spiel about how horrible Joseph Kony is. It is an understatement to say this has gone viral with over seventy-two million views in six days.
However how effective is this video in marketing Invisible Children’s cause? The video has caused a lot of criticism for the company and some of it is justly so. Most of this criticism revolves around Invisible Children’s uncertain finances (Only 30% of revenues went to direct services last year, with the rest going to staff salaries and film production) and exaggerated claims. Having said this I am not for or against KONY 2012. I am just looking at it from a marketing perspective. The video obviously achieved its publicly stated goal of raising awareness. The video is emotionally stimulating, well produced and empowers its viewers after they watch it. Unfortunately all of the negative press towards the campaign right now makes followers of the video feel like they jumped on an emotional bandwagon and that they were betrayed by Invisible Children. This does put viewers in the mood to donate. Seth Godin said it best, “there was no well-rehearsed method to turn a viewer into a fan into a donor into a repeat donor.”
Categories: