Project KONY and Invisible Children - yes, this is in MMO

[Clinton]

Many of you would have seen this Project KONY come up in your social graphs. It seems to be everywhere and everyone seems to be talking about it.

The 30 minute video.

KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.

In short, a charity makes a video about a bad guy, posts it on youtube, asks for help to stop him. Sits back and makes millions!

People are falling over themselves to send money, buy Kony bracklets/posters/T-shirts/other products and talk about it everywhere to spread the word. Nobody bothers to ask what the charity is doing with the money, check their accounts or even examine whether the charity is doing more harm than good (advocacy vs propaganda vs actual aid? What's the point of killing one bad guy? Is it worth $10M if someone else is just going to take his place tomorrow?)

The public are simply handing over the money in their rush to be "caring and compassionate" ...or to be seen as such. And those who can't afford those two calls to action at the end of the video to buy, buy, buy and to sign up for a regular monthly payment, are going for the cheapo modern method of demonstrating compassion by "sharing" the video i.e. "marketing" it to their friends

In all that commercial activity there are private companies making a killing too by riding on this wave, some very legitimately.

What makes a project like this take off the way it has? What's the X-factor here (apart from the obvious tug at the heartstrings)? Can we even distill such DNA to use in our own marketing?

And how can our commercial companies legitimately ride on such waves?

[benitez17]

I can't answer any of your questions about why it has taken off the way it has, but I'm already seeing a backlash on Facebook, Reddit, and other social media sites. It might not be a model that people with longer term plans for a business want to emulate.

[Thomas]

There's only one stakeholder benefiting from that video... and that's the bosses at the Invisible Children charity. Pretty smart marketing on their part, though, so kudos for that. It's amazing how powerful social media is - people will share without even understanding what they are sharing.

Personally, I'd rather support charitable causes and keep quiet about it. What makes this cause so much more important than others? If you really care, just donate to an appropriate charity and keep it to yourself. I don't see any reason to tell people about it. There's nothing I hate more than pseudo charity supporters or bandwagon idiots who don't contribute anything at all.

[Kay]

I watched the video and found it to be very slick. But an emotional appeal and a slick presentation does not necessarily make what they're doing "right". I suppose they're showing how to suck people into following your cause. It's all very well saying that they have to do it because the US govt won't intervene. But why should they intervene? There's been enough trouble before if not caused by then at least exacerbated by inappropriate US intervention.

There are agencies who are already doing good work in cases such as this, eg antislavery.org. There's also the UN agencies, but unfortunately there's too much buffonery within their ranks for them to be effective. I don't know what the right answer is but I feel sure it isn't starting "a war for peace", rousing up young people's emotions in this way, and collecting heaps of money from people who have no idea who you really are. We've seen plenty of scams before, such as just after the tsunami on 26 Dec 2004. People were so moved by the tragedy that they were tripping over their wallets to donate without paying attention to who exactly they were giving their money to.

I'm not saying that this Kony initiative is a scam, I don't have enough information to decide. But I sure as heck won't be joining in until or unless I know more, and I don't much like the smell of what I've already seen about it.

[JJMcClure]

It's all very well saying that they have to do it because the US govt won't intervene. But why should they intervene? .

I'm not going to answer that how I'd like to because this thread is about the campaign and not the actual topic but I'm sure that if you knew more about this you'd feel quite strongly about it. We're all involved and partially responsible for this situation to one extent or another and let's just say that sending the charity money is treating the symptoms and not the problem itself.

As for the campaign itself, it's showed up on even my facebook page and I have a very restricted number of friends (I have a policy of only being facebook friends with people I'm actually friends with, I know, weird or what) it's quite remarkable how viral it's gone and how quickly the backlash has started. This is definitely a case though of 'any publicity is good publicity'. It's got us talking about it hasn't it.

[Clinton]

April 20th has come and gone. It was when we were to have this massive on-the-streets action and protests. What happened?

The biggest social media experiment in history has ended in failure and nobody is talking about it! This guy is: A Great WriteUp on the failure.

Kony2012 has proven, (and its just one of many causes that has and will continue to), you can create a fictitious cause, with a retarded goal and everyone will join in.

[Baliw]

On the official http://www.kony2012.com/ website, it states that in June they are taking it to the next level and delivering the pledges to the UN.
Have never watched the video, but heard a lot about it.