Archive for March, 2012
Tapping Into Emotions- A Successful Marketing Strategy
After reading classmate, David Huynh’s Blog about marketing to people’s emotions with examples like NBA star Jeremy Lin and a new video about bullying, I wanted to further the discussion.
In class we discussed the controversial ‘Kony 2012’ video made by Invisible Children that aimed to connect with the western population, to raise awareness and donations. Kony 2012 as many of you know is around 30 minutes long and is about accused murderer, Joseph Kony, who kidnapped children and raised them to be apart of his “army”. The reason this video went viral was because the makers were able to connect with people on a personal level- people were made to feel sorry for those children. We discussed a lot about this video in class, and for that reason I want bring up an untouched point instead.
Tweets by PM of Uganda to various celebrities
Jason Russel, co-founder of Invisible Children, was arrested in San Diego and put into the psychiatric ward of the hospital (read and watch video: ‘Kony 2012’ co-creator, Jason Russell, detained by police). In response to this incident, the PM of Uganda released a You-tube video explaining how Joseph Kony is no longer in Uganda and reaffirms his non-support for ‘Kony 2012’. What caught my eye the most was that he turned to Twitter to get his point across. He tweeted to celebrities including Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Tim Tebow, and many more inviting them to visit his beautiful country. I see this is an extremely brilliant marketing strategy. Similar to what’s written in classmate Simrat Tatla’s Blog, celebrities have great influence over the population. The PM of Uganda was able to connect with the western population and those influenced by the ‘Kony 2012′ video, through celebrities using twitter. People are emotionally connected to celebrities and anything they support, people are influenced to support as well.
Personally, I think the PM of Uganda used an effective marketing strategy to educate the western population on what is actually happening in Uganda. What started off as tapping into millions of peoples’ emotions, through ‘Kony 2012’, is ending the same way, but with an anti-Kony 2012 campaign.
PM Amama Mbabazi speaks: