KONY

These days every marketer hopes for viral success, but when your campaign garners more than 70 million views in five days, you may want to pause for air.

Not-for-profit group Invisible Children found itself in that situation last week as its 30-minute documentary-style video, "Kony2012," caught fire around the world, becoming the fastest-growing viral video to date. (The previous recordholder was U.K. "X Factor" contestant Susan Boyle singing "I Dreamed a Dream," which took six days to hit the 70 million mark.)

"Kony2012," which seeks support for the arrest of Joseph Kony, an international war criminal known to abduct and force African children into combat, was uploaded to Vimeo two weeks ago. But the true viral affect started last week, when the video was uploaded on YouTube - then it got the most of public shares and media recognition as well. To tell the truth, I was overwhelmed by the fact that how many my Facebook friends shared it! After that, I am not surprised that it made a viral record! This is how a new 'movement' was created - events started to appear on Facebook  around the world!

Despite the rapid rise of Kony 2012, the video has brought a shower of criticism for potentially oversimplifying the issues, possibly encouraging “slacktivism” and turning Kony into a celebrity.

So who is Joseph Kony? (Read more and watch a video!)

Let me give you a brief introduction to Mr. Kony. The International  Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, compiled a list of the most wanted criminals in the world. Among better-known names like Muammar Khadafy, Joseph Kony had the unfortunate distinction of topping the list.

How do you get to the top of such a list? You form a guerilla army (The Lord’s Resistance Army) in Uganda and kidnap children to act as your foot soldiers. Not just a few children. Tens of thousands of children. You rip boys as young as eight and nine away from their homes and parents and force them to kill, torture, maim, rape and pillage, literally at gunpoint. Often, their first order is to kill their family and friends. You turn their lives into an unimaginable hell where the only avenue of escape seems to be their own death.

And it’s not just boys. Girls are kidnapped as well, forced to become sex slaves. Kony’s army has no cause, no goal, no reason for being. Despite its name, it’s unclear what Kony is actually resisting. The army exists, and the practice of kidnapping children continues solely because the world has allowed it to. In most cases, it’s because the world, like me, has never heard this story. It doesn’t know who Joseph Kony is.

 

This is where www.kony2012.com comes in. Started by filmmaker Jason Russell, who has been working to expose Kony for the last nine years, Kony2012 has a very clear goal: to make Kony famous by the end of this year, shining a blindingly bright light on his activities.  Russell believes that evil can’t be sustained when the world is watching you.  The Arab Spring indicates that Jason Russell is probably right.

The site has a heart-breaking 29-minute video, but that alone doesn’t really differentiate it. What is amazing is the way it uses digital communication and social media to help light the fires of fame around Joseph Kony. On the site, there are direct links to the Twitter accounts of 20 celebrities, including Oprah, Mark Zuckerberg and George Clooney, as well as social media links to 12 policy makers and political influencers including Bill Clinton, Condoleezza Rice and John Kerry. Kony 2012 knows that the world of social influence is spanned by only a few degrees of separation and that these influencers, if activated, can bring unwelcome awareness to Kony with brutal efficiency. The degree of digital savviness shown by this site and the movement in general is humbling and inspiring. Of course, it helps to have a compelling story to tell, and the story of Joseph Kony certainly qualifies.