Does anyone remember the good old KONY 2012 social movement— or is it a long and distant memory that i’m sure a lot of us have forgotten by now.
Let me refresh your memory, Kony is an african warlord who was responsible for massacres, mass rapes, and creating a legion of child soldiers. He has evaded capture for nearly three decades.
There was a 30 minute film released on Kony, urging to make him famous and fight to find Kony and bring awareness. The video went viral and had over 100 million views.
As I got curious as to what impact the campaign made, I did more research and found out that there is a LOT of controversy towards Invisible Children organization, as out of almost all of the revenue they raised– SO LITTLE ACTUALLY WENT TO THE CAUSE. In 2013, the organization made approx 32 million in received revenue , and you know what?… a whopping 82% of that went into “media, mobilisation, protection and recovery”, according to the report.
The biggest increase in expenses was for mobilisation, which includes film tours and music tours, international events and advocacy.
Kony 2012 brings up two strong problems I have with social causes:
1. How non-transparent these organizations tend to be, not being completely clear to consumers on how their donations will actually impact or reach the cause they are fighting for. Did consumers donate to the cause knowing the money is going back into advertising — or think it was going to the invisible children like Kony promotes?
2. These social movement crazes inherently create a lot of Slacktivism in the system, where consumers all think that by “liking, or sharing,” the post is enough to change and actually feel less obliged to donate to the cause as they already feel as though they’ve played their part.
In fact, research shows that a large majority of an online community contributes nothing, fewer then 0.24 percent of consumers who show support to a cause online actually contributed in form of donations. Compared to traditional forms of mobilizing this is a very poor conversion rate!!
This resonates well with me, I mean I liked and shared the Kony Video and was an activist in the movement and in my head that was me doing enough (which turns out I’m happy I did as the organization did not seem to be so transparent or truthful then we all had hoped.)
That is my opinion on the whole Kony movement, would love to hear your guys’ thoughts on the subject!
Comment below!
sources:
http://www.news.com.au/world/remember-kony-2012-well-its-2013-what-happened/story-fndir2ev-1226550575923
http://governancexborders.com/2014/03/04/online-slacktivism-is-there-a-trade-off-between-virality-and-sustainability/
http://invisiblechildren.com/kony/
Slacktivism is indeed a big problem, and some UBC researchers (including Kate White) have a brand new paper showing that engaging in slacktivism (like signing a petition or liking a Facebook page) can actually make meaningful activism LESS likely (like donating time or money).
That goes against conventional wisdom which says that if you can get your foot in the door by getting someone to do something small, they’ll be MORE likely to do something bigger later. It’s definitely important information for marketers to know, since a lot of people assume that getting Facebook likes etc. can help a cause – in fact, in some cases, it actually does the opposite.
Here’s the paper, it’s a great read: http://web.missouri.edu/~segerti/capstone/Slacktivism.pdf
Hi Kelly!
Wow, interesting to always hear about how these campaigns turn out after the buzz dies down! I am shocked to hear that 82% of the revenue that they generated did not go towards the cause. It makes me wonder how the people who actually did donate to Invisible Children must feel. If I had donated $100 and found out that only $18 of those dollars actually went to Invisible Children, I would be outraged! Talk about hidden agendas and not being transparent at all! Perhaps this is a secondary reason why slacktivism is becoming more and more popular. Incidents like these can cause people to distrust charitable organizations. This is a clear example of a charitable organization not handling their money responsibly. I believe they have a duty not only to the cause itself but these organizations have a duty owed to their donors. They should be transparent and honest about their efforts to channel donation dollars to the real cause. After all, after you donate it is sometimes hard to determine where exactly every dollar of your donation goes. For me personally, I’m not really the type of person that donates online for this reason. I’d rather actually take action and be a part of something in my community where I can see the benefits of my efforts directly. Thanks for sharing this!
Hey Kelly,
Great post! I remember reading the paper Noah linked to in consumer behaviour last year- its really cool. I know that the phenomenon even appears offline with people wearing certain paraphenelia associated with different causes etc. (one example is the fake live strong bracelets that became a fashion fad). The lengths people go to for social lofting and making themselves feel good about themselves is, in a weird way, fascinating.
One implication I recognize with this phenomenon is how marketers can use social media as a promotional tool without falling into the slacktivism trap. Surely staying offline is not the only option. I think these ideas were alluded to in the paper (mentioned above), but in my own words:
1. You can (attempt) to make a direct connection with the cause on social media and the persons own values. So the connection between the persons values and the cause is strong enough to yield action.
2. You could do tiered recognition in which the person gets like “special” social media status if they do in fact take action.
I wonder how else you could mitigate the risk of slacktivism?