You probably know Invisible Children and their pursuit of the Ugandan warlord, Kony. Through their mastery of persuasion, the charitable organization called Invisible Children has created this week’s buzz with a viral YouTube video about Kony, an adult who abuses children for his war in Uganda. Invisible Children wants you to know that Kony preys upon children, capturing girls for sex slaves and boys for warriors, as he prosecutes his local terrorism under the protection of the Uganda leadership. Invisible Children want your awareness.
And, through their skill, they’ve generated awareness or that Reception/Exposure stage in the Cascade. They posted a slick video about Kony, Uganda, and those kids on YouTube. On Monday of this week it got 66,000 hits. By Thursday of this week (March 8, 2012), the video had gone wildly viral with over 50,000,000 hits. What persuasion play did Invisible Children use to make this stunning leap in Reception?
They directed their small group of social media followers to bombard a specific list of 20 celebrities with the Kony YouTube video. That small group managed to make themselves larger to those 20 celebrities and they struck three in the heart, Oprah Winfrey, Ryan Seacrest, and Ellen DeGeneres. These celebrities then pointed their millions of social media followers to the YouTube video and the rest is persuasion gravity from the Communication Cascade.
Realize both the simplicity and effectiveness of this play. Invisible Children appears to have carefully selected the 20 celebrities so that their legion of followers do not strongly overlap. While the three primary targets, Ryan, Oprah, and Ellen are famous, they are famous with different audiences. Thus, in combination the three bring an even larger audience than say getting Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Matt Damon.
Now, the fun part. This may hurt. But, persuasion is about Changing the Other Guy and sometimes that’s not pretty. Persuasion is only and always about Change.
Consider Invisible Children. A persuasion maven should immediately ask, What’s the TACT with Invisible Children? If someone claims they exist to Change Other Guys to the benefit of invisible children, wouldn’t you expect more resource on the ground, to deliver aid and comfort to abused, neglected, and abandoned children?
But, if you look at how Invisible Children acquires and distributes its resources, it appears they seek a different TACT. They want to Change Other Guys to support Invisible Children, not invisible children. According to CBS News, last year they raised over $13 million for their cause and spent more than half of it on themselves with about 20% going to on the ground help for the invisible children of the world.
At the first TACT, Invisible Children excels as mavens. They employed an old persuasion tactic, the two step flow. The two step flow posits that if you first change Opinion Leaders, then second, you will change Followers. Invisible Children used their Followers to influence Leaders of other people. And in the cheap, fast, and easy way of WATtapping in social media, all it took was a twitch from Oprah or Ryan or Ellen to ignite a Reception firestorm for Invisible Children.
Now, at first glance it appears that Invisible Children could help invisible children through their media persuasion efforts in another kind of two step operation. Step 1, rally the world’s awareness of Kony in Uganda. Step 2, the world captures Kony and thereby saves invisible children.
Here’s what you don’t know about Kony and the rest of the world, particularly the US Government. Last year President Obama ordered Special Operations forces to capture Kony. Over 100 Spec Ops troopers are humping the mountains and jungles of Uganda without the permission or support of the Ugandan national government in the single minded pursuit of the warlord Kony. We are after him and will bring him to justice or justice to him. Obama did that without Invisible Children.
So, if the world is already in pursuit of Kony with the military resources of the US leading the way, Step 1 is already completed without any social media persuasion from Invisible Children. The world is actively seeking Kony and after the fact, Invisible Children is calling for the world to actively seek Kony. Most Other Guys, especially people strongly tuned into social media, have no idea that the US Government is already in hot pursuit of Kony, but they do know that Invisible Children is in hot pursuit of awareness.
As a persuasion analyst, I recognize the skill of Invisible Children. They can hit the TACT of getting you to give them money to run Invisible Children. They do so by making you feel responsible and committed and kind to children in terrible trouble, when all you’re doing is clicking a mouse in the safety and comfort of your home or office. Invisible Children then takes that money to make cheap videos and hype them through cheap social media persuasion which attracts more Other Guys who can click a mouse and feel responsible and committed and kind to children in terrible trouble.
No one, not Invisible Children and not you, is doing anything like a TACT of saving invisible children. You don’t even realize your government is risking the lives of military personnel to hit the TACT of saving those invisible children by capturing or killing Kony and others like him. As long as everyone is WATtapping on websites or twitter or YouTube, everyone feels good while changing nothing. Invisible Children has figured this out and survives with it.
Remember the Rule.
There’s a Difference between Persuasion, and Smoke and Mirrors; With Persuasion the Illusion Lingers.
Invisible Children may find that their success may cause Other Guys to wonder just what is persuasion and what is smoke and mirrors.