Flashy-ad-makers-who-happen-to-spend-a-lot-of-money-that-really-don’t-highlight-the-cause Invisible Children is still pushing the KONY 2012 cause, despite it’s April 20th ‘Cover the Night’ event failed to get those social media clicks into real poster-pasting action. A new video posted highlights a brand new event organised on November 3.
So, they just don’t get it. (Though, I’m assuming the video was made before the actual event)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEKr1mjII-c
“We will take the next step. On November 3rd, this movement will unite like never before,” it promotes on its latest (and flashy – which probably was made with your donation or purchase of that KONY 2012 pack) video highlighting its future. The video doesn’t really go into much detail as well, only highlighting people dancing.
It should also be noted that the US Presidential Election is 3 days after the event.
Though, based on the number of views on the video – the November 3 event will have little reaction. From the nearly 90 million on its initial video, to 2 million on its Part II sequel; the What’s Next video has had only around 125,000 views on YouTube (and only 833 on Vimeo).
However, is the fault of its fizzling on them – with Jason Russell’s widely-reported breakdown – or is it us who apparently think showing we care is by pressing that retweet button or like button, as opposed to real action like protesting? To be fair, their plan was to put posters, not act with protests – something which GetUp! has managed to successfully do with its online campaigns such as on the carbon tax issue.
New charity campaigns will use social media – but they will now look at this at avoiding, as opposed to replicating, because they want action not 24-hour media attention.
I’ve sent questions to Invisible Children on why do they think the Cover the Night campaign failed, and the future of the campaign.
So far, they haven’t responded.