Since the video went viral and exploded all over the Internet (and all over people's faces), there's been a whole lot of controversy over how accurate the information is and about the shady management practices of the organization (Invisible Children) that made the video, with many saying that perhaps the rampant sharing and popularity of the video is doing more harm than good. I won't go into details here, but this Harvard Business Review article sums up the issues (and my own personal take on the controversy) quite nicely.
For the purposes of this entry though, all that is besides the point. I'll let people argue those issues elsewhere, because what I want to discuss is the video itself. This video is a an absolutely perfect case study in how to make a great viral video, i.e. one that can get people excited and emotionally invested in an issue they'd never previously known or cared about, and I want to dig deeper into *why* so many of us were compelled to share that video, beyond a simple "because it was well-made." This video was not just well-made, it managed to touch us on so many different emotional levels throughout the course of the video's 30-minute run time in a way that very few videos have been able to in recent memory.
The viral success of the Kony 2012 video is all the more remarkable when you consider that it had two major things going against it.
The first is that the video is a whopping 30 minutes long. THIRTY MINUTES LONG. For a video that long to go viral is absolutely unheard of in today's day and age, in our chaotic, fast-paced, on-the-go world of 140 character limits, on-demand everything, instant everything, and never having a moment to sit quietly and reflect about anything. Most videos that go viral are between 2 to 3 minutes long, and even 5 minutes is pushing it. But THIRTY minutes? The only way you can get a 30-minute video to go viral in today's world is if the content is just that well-crafted. And Kony 2012 is indeed that well-crafted.
The second amazing (or perhaps shocking) thing about this video is that it's about a charitable cause and produced by a charitable organization. Charities have been around since the beginning of humanity, ever since people started wanting to help other people who could not help themselves, and I think it's safe to say that all human beings support the idea of charity and are in favor of good, well-run charities receiving consistent and sufficient funding. But the biggest thing that prevents charities' PR efforts from truly going viral is that these charities often are battling some very serious and depressing problems in society, problems that will not go away anytime soon even despite our best efforts. Problems like genocide, millions of children dying of starvation and disease, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, etc. which make us very, very sad. And these types of problems are of such a large and overwhelming scale that we feel powerless to do anything about it, and we end up not wanting to think about it at all, because what's the point?
And that goes against everything that makes content viral. It's possible for a sad or disturbing video to go viral if it's really shocking and unexpected (think 2 Girls 1 Cup), but for the most part, videos that make people happy will go viral much more then those that make us sad. There's a great talk online by a well-respected professor of marketing at Stanford named Jennifer Aaker in which she talks about her research on happiness and meaning and how these concepts relate to a successful and powerful social media campaign. The key takeaways from her research are:
- Human beings are wired to understand stories much moreso than logic. The power of stories is what makes people act, and even the most logical, well-argued arguments are not as persuasive as a powerful story that resonates with others.
- Content is mostly likely to be shared when it:
- Is surprising, mysterious, and/or makes you very curious
- Makes you happy and/or fills with you emotion
- Makes you feel like you're a part of something bigger
- Enables you to connect (or re-connect) with others
Think about the craziest or the most recent viral video you've seen, and it probably had most if not all of these characteristics. In the next several paragraphs, I'm going to be breaking down the Kony 2012 video and highlighting all the ways in which its creators were able to form and shape the message and content in a way that would virtually guarantee it would become a viral hit. My hope is that through this analysis, we will all be that much better-equipped to create our own viral content as well one day, so that we too can bring some meaningful awareness to a cause that we feel strongly about.
Make your audience feel like they are a part of something bigger
If you watch the original video (embedded at the top of this entry), right from the get-go there is a beautiful shot of the planet Earth from outer space, with a voice-over narration talking about how "Humanity's greatest desire is to belong and connect. And now we see each other, we hear each other, we share what we love and it reminds us what we all have in common," accompanied by images of people both young and old using the latest technologies and social networks to communicate, and followed by clips from several well-known viral video examples. BOOM. Human beings ar Right from the beginning the creators are laying the groundwork for a story of epic scale that has relevance for each and every one of us, no matter who you are or where you're from....that is, unless you are living in a third world country in a ramshackle hut with a dirt floor and no Facebook or Internet, no electricity, and no running water. In that case, this video will have no relevance to you whatsoever, and in that case it sucks to be you. But I digress...
Use Social Proof
I don't know how big an organization Invisible Children is or how many members they have, but they certainly made it seem like they had millions of followers in every major city and every corner of the globe (see 16:30 to 17:30 of the video). For all we know, many of those followers featured in the video may have been paid actors, or the producers could've been taking the same group of a few hundred people and filming them over and over in different poses and settings and while alternately holding up banners with different city's names printed on them.
But regardless, if you want people to be interested in what you're selling, you have to make your product or service look cool by demonstrating that lots of others who are already onboard, and social proof is a great way to do that. It's not unlike a street performer taking some spare change and dollar bills and "seeding" their collection hat/bin before they start performing.
When faced with any kind of decision big or small, it's human nature to want some reassurance that what you are about to do is normal and is something that others in your situation would do or have previously done. Facebook realized this a long time ago, and it's why nowadays on many sites you'll see social plug-ins like the one below showing your friends and other people who also "Like" a particular brand or product or service.
If the makers of this video had instead said "We are a new movement, we are few in number, and we need your help," it would raise some major red flags in people eyes. First, you'd wonder why they have so few followers if this is such a worthy cause. Second, you'd feel hesitant and reluctant because you'd quickly do the math in your head and realize that volunteering your time and energy will not be enough to give this organization the numbers and influence it needs to make a difference. But if you are the 1 millionth member of the 10 millionth member of a movement, then you are lending your help to a force that is likely to make a difference, and you can exert minimal effort to participate while fully reaping the benefits and feel-good happiness when they succeed.
Use a small, innocent child to shamelessly tug at your viewers' heartstrings
Anyone who's familiar with Youtube will know that the most surefire way to get people, especially women*, to click on a Youtube link or thumbnail is an image of a cute little kid. There are countless videos on Youtube of cute little kids doing various cute things like laughing and biting another baby's finger and doing his best Darren Criss impression that manage to garner millions of views and shares.
*As for guys, we will instinctively click on any and all video links showing cleavage in the thumbnail image in the hopes that we get to see a hot chick and her double Ds exposed. This applies to every guy on Earth, with no exceptions.
Starting from the 2-minute mark of the Kony 2012 video, we see stock footage of the birth of the director's own son Gavin, followed by scenes of Gavin blissfully playing around, being silly, saying cute things, and just overall being cute in general. The director then contrasts the happy and innocent image of his young son with that of a young Ugandan boy named Jacob, who has dreams and goals of one day becoming a lawyer but is emotionally scarred from having witnessed the murder of his brother, breaks down sobbing when talking about it, and even talks about wanting to die because there's nothing left for him to live for, the way his life is going.
The great Steven Spielberg is actually the master of using children and the parent-child relationship to tug at people's heartstrings and get viewers emotionally engaged in a story. Think about "ET: the Extra-Terrestrial," "Jurassic Park," "AI: Artificial Intelligence," etc. Most of his movies feature a young child or children whose vulnerability and ability to survive in a scary, hostile world is the focal point of the plot and as a result the fate of all humanity is symbolically hanging in the balance. The need to protect young children from harm is a universal human instinct, so showing an innocent child suffering is something that will produce an emotional reaction in people every time, guaranteed. Because many people have children but more important everyone has been a child at one point, and it's a common experience we all share, and is something that is precious and pure and should not be tainted by suffering and injustice. It's why abortion is a never-ending topic of controversy, it's why dead baby jokes are so repulsive and frowned upon, and it's why pedophiles are the most reviled category of criminal across the world.
The director also cleverly uses his young son Gavin to "lay out the facts" of the case for why Kony should be stopped. It's one of those storytelling devices where we know the director is obviously and shamelessly pandering to us, but we still fall for it because we just can't help but lower our guard when a child asks us to do something for them with a quivering lip and their puppy eyes, you just can't say no. You just can't. We all know that this Kony/LRA is probably an extremely complex issue with many shades of grey, but when a child tells you in such black and white terms that Kony is a bad man, that he doesn't want Jacob to die, and that he wants you to do something about it, no sane parent (or viewer) will be able to say no to that. It's also a great way to simplify the issue and cut through all the BS, to drive home the point that though we all might disagree on the particulars of this very complex issue, none of us will argue that Kony (or Saddam Hussein or Osama bin or Kim Jong Il) is a terrible person and should be brought to justice as soon as possible, all things being equal.
A great example of the clarifying and simplifying effect of a young child is the closing scene in the movie "Moneyball" when **SPOILER ALERT** Brad Pitt's character has just received an offer from the Boston Red Sox that will make him the highest-paid General Manager in the history of sports, but would also mean he'd have to move out of California and essentially give up custody of his young daughter. Even though logic and common sense tells him that this is a once-in-a-life opportunity that he can't pass up, he can't help but start welling up while listening to his daughter's heartfelt acoustic guitar song recording which she personally made for him, and he decides to stay, money and fame and recognition be damned. He knew that was the right decision from the start, but seeing and hearing his daughter say it made the decision so much more plain, clear-cut, and OBVIOUS.
Create a "Visible Victim"
One of the biggest hurdles for any charitable organization out there trying to do good in this world is the fact that human beings are fundamentally wired to avoid, tune out, and forget things that are tragic and which make us sad, because let's be honest, that's the only thing keeping us sane in this crazy world. If we became continuously and deeply emotionally invested in every tragic thing that we saw or experienced, be it 9/11 or the death of a family member or breaking up with your girlfriend or boyfriend, we'd all become permanently depressed and society would not be able to function. It's our ability to quickly overcome and move past such sad events that keeps society going and prevents us from all becoming post-tramautic stress disorder sufferers.
Unfortunately, it's this same survival instinct that also prevents us from being able to really stay invested in a worthy charitable cause for very long. There are so many people suffering out there in so many terrible ways, and thanks to the massive scale of the Internet we've never been more flooded with stories of rape, murder, starvation, disease, genocide, natural disaster, etc. to the point that we simply become desensitized to it all and end up being unable to deeply empathize with any of those causes.
As the COO of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg details in this great talk at Stanford, economists have this concept called the "Visible Victim," which basically states that for us to actually care about a victim they have to be tangible and visible to us. Take the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and earthquake, for example. Every year between 5% and 10% of Americans give money overseas, but when that tsunami happened some huge percentage of Americans (over 70%) opened up their wallets to try and help the victims. It's interesting because while the tsunami killed an enormous number of people (as much as 300,000), every 6 weeks the same number of children in this world die of unclean water, believe it or not. And every 5 and a half weeks or so, the same number of people in this world die of AIDS. The difference was that the tsunami was just so visible. Day after day we saw it on CNN and BBC and every major newspaper and television news outlet, and we all watched in horror the mass devastation it caused to so many people's lives. But stuff like unclean water or AIDS are epidemics that have been around a long time and which we no longer see very often in the news, if at all.
So how do we get people to care about these age-old issues? The answer, though it's obviously much easier said than done, is to make the victim visible. People don't get desensitized to the specific, but they do to large numbers. For example, it's simply impossible to mentally process the image or the thought of 6 million children dying. It's just too sad and it's just too hard. As Sheryl Sandberg says, "I don't know what 6 million ANYTHING looks like."
The makers of Kony 2012 realized this problem early on. Hell, the name of their organization is "Invisible Children" and their goal is to take these children who have been invisible for so long and make them visible for everyone to see. And for the purposes of the Kony 2012 video, the visible victim they chose was the young Ugandan boy Jacob. He is someone we can focus our attention on, and by saving him we can know we made a difference and did our own small part towards helping solve a larger problem.
Introduce an antagonist that everyone will love to hate
In this great PDF summary of the book of the same name, "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs," there's a section talking about how in order to tell a great story, you should always introduce a clear villain that everyone can hate and rally against. In every classic story, there is a hero who fights a villain. Take Apple in the year 1984, for example. Back then, the "villain" was IBM, known as "Big Blue" at the time. Before Jobs introduced this famous TV ad to a group of Apple salespeople, he created a dramatic story around it. "IBM wants it all," he said. Apple would be the only company to stand in its way. It was very dramatic and the crowd went crazy. Great brands, great movies, and even major religions all have something in common: the idea of vanquishing a shared enemy. In order to get people to rally around you (the hero), you need to create a single hateable villain for them to focus their collective energies on.
We saw with the recent Occupy Wall Street protests how much latent anger and frustration there was among the youth of the nation. We had just experienced the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and there was a clear villain in the big banks and their executives, who in their greed had brought the entire system crashing down with their reckless financial engineering. Recessions and cyclical swings in the economy are a fact of life that we know and accept, but what got so many people upset this time around was the fact that, unlike for example the Enron scandal in which all the top executives involved were shamed and branded as criminals and forced to become social pariahs for the rest of their lives, in this case even two and three years after the initial downturn as the country was trying to pick up the pieces, the people who had engineered this financial holocaust were still left standing, wholly untouched and unaffected, with the government showing little to no willingness to prosecute any of them. That was what set people off, what got that feeling welling up inside many of us, that feeling makes you want to cry and yell out "It's just not fair!!!"
In the case of the Kony 2012 video, you may not have realized it at first but the US government is just as much of an antagonist as Kony is. The producers first introduce the tragic story of Jacob and how Kony and the LRA have destroyed tens of thousands of young childrens' lives. They then portray the US Government as being very apathetic towards this terrible tragedy, with scenes of various politicians stoically and matter-of-factly explaining that the US government cannot and would not help stop Kony and the LRA because this is simply not a priority and isn't in the national interest.
In the Kony 2012 video, the hero of the story (the Invisible Children organization) demonstrates its own heroism around the 15:30 mark by showing scenes in which they've successfully changed the mind of the US government and have successfully elicited government action towards Kony and the LRA. "We built a community around the idea that where you live shouldn't determine whether you live. We were committed to stop Kony and rebuilding what he had destroyed. And because we couldn't wait for governments or institutions to step in, we did it ourselves." Everyone loves an underdog, and these kinds of scenes act as great "proof points" of Invisible Children's competency and credibility, and allows them to position themselves as this scrappy underdog scoring major victories against the Evil Empire and the Evil Emperor in the US Government and Kony, respectively.
Create a sense of urgency and have a clear Call To Action
The first 23 minutes of "Kony 2012," is an emotionally engaging story of two innocent young boys named Gavin and Jacob, a bad man named Kony, and why we have to get rid of the latter in order to save the former. It's a touching and oftentimes very sad story that gets our attention and keeps our eyes glued to the screen.
However, all that emotion would be useless and wasted without a clear Call To Action i.e. specific instructions on what the viewers can do to to buy your product or participate in your movement. For a video like Kony 2012, without specific instructions on how to cope people can feel helpless, panic, and tune out.
That's why at the 23:00 minute mark they start talking about their plan to "make Kony famous," how you can help, and how little effort it will require for you to participate. In today's high-paced world with all its noise and distractions, you have to make it easy, simple, and instant in order to get people to participate in anything nowadays. Going along with what I said about social proof earlier, the makers of the video do a great job of giving viewers the sense that all the hard work has already been done, that they are on the verge of something truly great and transcendent, and that all they need from us the viewers is to share the video and maybe donate a few dollars a month. For the viewer, it's basically nothing to lose and a lot to gain if the whole Kony 2012 "experiment" pans out.
And by showing a countdown during the video as well as the later declaration that the video will "expire" on December 31st, 2012 they are creating a sense of urgency and delivering a clear deadline by which you must act, not unlike the "Time Left to Buy" countdowns you see on Groupon deals, where you know exactly what you have to do and by when you have to do it, so that if you look away for even a second you'll be missing out on something all your friends will be talking about tomorrow. It's what makes Groupon deals seem that much more desirable and tantalizing, and it's what gives viewers of Kony 2012 that extra little push to share, and share NOW.
Leverage the latest technologies to the fullest
This is probably the most important of all. The message of Kony 2012 would not have been nearly as engaging if they weren't able to offer a new solution to what was an age-old problem. They refer to the video as an "experiment" and right away they are acknowledging that the methods that they and other charities had been employing in the past to publicize their cause simply were not working as well or as quickly as anyone wanted.
"We have reached a crucial time in history, where what we do (or don't do) right now will affect every generation to come. Arresting Joseph Kony will prove that the world we live in has new rules. That the technology that has brought our planet together is allowing us to respond to the problems of our friends."
I don't think it's going overboard to say that Kony 2012 represents a revolution (or at least a very sudden evolution) in the way that charitable organizations publicize their causes. It's safe to say that charities are generally not at the cutting edge of technology, for a variety of reasons. But the Kony 2012 video has elicited a response we rarely see in pop culture and in the mainstream media, much less in charity.
The people behind the Kony 2012 were successful because A) they have a great understanding of what touches people's hearts and what types of stimuli people respond to on the Internet and B) they realized that social networks like Facebook had evolved to a point where they could finally achieve a level of scale in their message that would not have been possible even 3 or 4 years ago. This new culture of people wanting to share everything online and being able to do so at a click of a button did not exist before but has become an everyday reality thanks to Facebook.
Which brings me to my next point, that the entire Kony 2012 video is essentially one gigantic advertisement for Facebook. But there's nothing wrong with that, because all the great things that Kony 2012 has accomplished, i.e. huge awareness for a worthy cause and radical innovation in driving social change, would not have been possible without Facebook.
People are always suspicious when they sense the possible presence of special interests and corrupting influences, but in this case we don't have to worry because Kony 2012 and its message was not being manipulated by Facebook, but rather the makers of Kony 2012 were fully leveraging the functionality and power of Facebook for good, so that, if anything, it's Facebook who should be grateful that they can be the enabler for such a novel and inspirational movement.
And while it's true that Facebook and Google have evolved since their humble and idealistic beginnings to become large mega-corporations which are focused on generating a consistent profit (mostly via advertisements), that doesn't take away from the fact that they still provide a basic core service that is free, that billions of people use, and which makes the world a better place to live in. For Facebook that basic service is allowing people to to quickly and effortlessly share great content with our friends (for free), and with Google it's allowing people to instantly access all of the world's information (for free) with the click of a button.
Another awesome example of great storytelling and technology making possible what once might have been impossible can be seen in the Google ad below titled "Parisian Love," which many of you may recognize.
As in the Kony 2012 video, this Google ad tells a heartwarming story of a individual who is looking for love and how Google's various features enable him to get the girl and live happily ever after. I loved how the Kony 2012 video was able to weave in Facebook in a tasteful and relatively subtle way to tell their story, because it drives home the point of how Facebook connects us all, how each of our own Facebook profiles tells a story of our lives, and how our lives all interconnect to create this one one amazing epic narrative.
Some Closing Thoughts
At the end of the day though, the real reason I'm writing this entry is because I believe that this Kony 2012 phenomenon represents the next major step in the use of social networks to drive massive social change.
When Facebook and Twitter first started getting popular, they were roundly criticized as being little more than a vehicle for our own vanity and self-promotion, and that they were making the world even more shallow, narcissistic, and self-centered than ever before. But now that the novelty has finally worn off and social networks like Facebook and Twitter have become an accepted and unavoidable part of our everyday lives, people are starting to figure out the more practical applications of how we can utilize these platforms for good, and not just shameless self-promotion and vanity posts.
The first major milestones were the uprisings in the Middle East, followed by the Occupy [City Name] protests. These were movements that were started offline and would have become huge issues even without social media, but social media helped both of them spread faster and grow faster than they otherwise would or could have.
On the other hand, Kony 2012 is a movement that was conceived from the very beginning to be a social media campaign. Before this, no one had heard of Invisible Children or Joseph Kony, and had this video and this campaign not been initiated, none of us would've ever heard about either one. What's so great about Kony 2012 is that they learned from and improved upon the many mistakes made during the Occupy movement. Regardless of whether or not you agreed with the Occupy movement, you have to admit that it was pretty amazing to see all those young people all over the world mobilized and united, given how politically apathetic young people (especially in the US) have been the last few decades. They were able to tap into a powerful and brewing storm of discontent among the world's youth to great effect, but at the same time the execution and follow-up (i.e. what to do once everyone was there and occupying) was extremely lacking to say the least. OWS had no clear leader, its goals were too broad and aimless, there was no one villain to single out, and no clear call to action except to "occupy" places.
However, in the case of Kony 2012, they had a clear leader, a clear villain, a simple and highly focused goal, and they brought it all together with an amazingly-made video that was extremely shareable. Occupy Wall Street tried to be everything for everyone and that was its downfall, but Kony 2012 was able to really focus and choose its battles wisely. Sure, there are tons of terrible and sadistic people out there that deserve our attention, but Kony 2012 decided to focus on just one, Mr. Joseph Kony. And there are millions of innocent children out there suffering every day, but Kony 2012 decided to focus on just one, a Ugandan boy named Jacob who wants to become a lawyer someday. And by doing so, they were able to convince us that maybe we really could save this young boy Jacob and stop this bad man Kony, and by doing so save millions of others as well.
Last but not least, for all the cynics out there who criticize Kony 2012 and Invisible Children simply on the grounds that bringing Kony to justice won't solve anything, I'm sorry to say that you are simply missing the point. When John F. Kennedy declared to the world that he would put a man on the moon, it was so brazen, so patently absurd, and so seemingly unnecessary, but it got the country PUMPED and excited in a way no one could have predicted. Many extremely intelligent, logical, and rational people at the time criticized it as being a waste of time and funds that could be better allocated elsewhere, like education or improving the nation's infrastructure. But it was our ability to put a man on the moon that made people realize our endless potential as a nation, and that we are capable of so much than we had ever dreamed.
The most important lesson to take away from the Kony 2012 video is that in order to save the world, you have to start small and you have to start somewhere. Rome wasn't built in a day and it takes years of blood, sweat, and tears to create any kind of meaningful social change. It's the same for entrepreneurs starting their own company and it was the same for Invisible Children - the founder himself talks about how he's been working more than 9 years to build awareness for this cause but it's only now that he has achieved the level of awareness he once dreamed of.
Change takes time, but in today's fast-paced world of instant-everything and on-demand everything and a million different brands of energy drink and a million different trashy reality shows, we've lost our patience and our soul as a society and we've never been more out of touch with this fundamental law of nature, that change takes time. But seeing the reaction to Kony 2012 has restored my faith in humanity somewhat. What I saw with Kony 2012 was millions and millions of all people sitting through an entire 30-minute video, actually caring about an issue that doesn't directly affect them in any way, and taking the time to tell their friends about it and help out in whatever way they can.
Mother Teresa once said "In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love." And it's so true. Even though Warren Buffett donated tens of billions of dollars of his personal wealth to charity, that is still just a teeny tiny drop in the enormous bucket of terrible problems the world faces.
It's a common theme in every great superhero story as well - They have these amazing superpowers which they use to fight injustice in the hopes of saving the world, but eventually they realize that no matter how much good they do it's just never enough and things always seem to get worse and worse. And not only that, people start hating them for trying to make a difference.
The makers of Kony 2012 are kinda like vigilante superheroes in that way, and they will have to suffer a similar fate. Just like Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man were hunted by the authorities for working outside the law and accused of doing more harm than good, the makers of the Kony 2012 campaign will be criticized, taunted, and ridiculed for a very long time, despite the impact they've already made on the world.
But people forget that superheroes are not there to save the world on their own, because that's just not possible. Superheroes are there to inspire others to save the world with them, and to help us imagine a better world where we won't need superheroes to come and save us all the time. Superheroes exist to set an example for the rest of humanity and to help unleash and unlock potential in people that they never even knew they had.
The true measure of a superhero is not by his own achievements, but by how many other superheroes he was able to create and inspire. And the same will be true for the makers of Kony 2012. People are criticizing their methods and ridiculing the founder of Invisible Children for his recent embarrassing run-in with the law. But Kony 2012 showed us what amazing things can be achieved through social media now, when it's done correctly, and I look forward to seeing the continuing evolution of social media-driven social change, led by people who were inspired by Kony 2012, whether they realize it or not.
In closing, I will leave you with this clip from the ending of the movie "Shindler's List," a touching scene that (I believe) sums up quite nicely everything I've been trying to say in this entry.
