What can we learn from the KONY 2012 Campaign?

Thanks to Nico, I had the opportunity to check out KONY 2012 video. Wow! Thanks Nico.

First of all, a little background - KONY 2012, is a campaign to bring an African rebel leader - Joseph Kony, active in and around Uganda, to justice for his crimes against children, whom he recruits for his rebel army. The campaign has various sub-campaigns - a twitter campaign, poster campaign and a petition campaign - anchored by a 30-minute video on YouTube. The campaign has been started by a San Diego based activist group called Invisible Children made up of three filmmaker friends.

Now why is this important? It turns out that these folks launched a video campaign on the 5th of March with a few thousand hits and then on the 7th of March went completely viral. We saw it it yesterday when there were 15M views and now there are 40M+ views. It is important because there are focusing on Peace, Love, Respect, Dignity and they are writing the book on social media campaigning with a very small budget. Well done!

What can we learn from them?

1. Do your Groundwork: For several months (even years), they kept an archive of all their videos and photos of their actions towards their chosen cause. They built a base of supporters at schools and community centers through a variety of awareness events.

2. Use Classic Building Blocks: They got the right building blocks - great logo, clear message, poster, flag, bracelet, website, Facebook page, Twitter account and of course the YouTube video! The numbered bracelet, missions, action day and action kit all add to the sense of community.

3. Make it Personal: By putting his own son in the video, the narrator of the film has made the story "real". It's a classic Hollywood ploy - used in Blood Diamond. Showing 30,000 children suddenly has more meaning when you realize it can happen to someone you care about.

4. Seed the Campaign: First the video was transmitted to the base. Then the base were encouraged to share the video with celebrities and lawmakers. All the building blocks were there. And the viewer (or celebrity team member) was emotionally ready to do something...and then LUCK happens. Oprah, P. Diddy, Justin Bieber and others and their twitter accounts started to forward the link to their followers. And the rest, as they say is history and fodder for the social scientists, the journalists and people like me.

What does it all mean?

We are now entering the new world of social activists as rock stars. Suddenly the guy or girl with a cause is the rock star, not just the guy with the guitar or just a pretty face. These are the activists joining the music, TV, sports, film, politicians and Internet entrepreneurs to truly change the world for good. One things is for sure, there will be more social activist stars. Because once the people like one, they want more...