Kony 2012 project

This project is a humanitarian one. But to my mind, they used a marketing plan to promote it and it is an interesting new point of view.

First I will quickly explain what is Kony 2012 and Invisible Children with my own words.

Promptly, Joseph Kony is the chief of the LRA rebels. This group acts in central Africa and they abduct young boys and kids. For the boys it’s to be part of his child soldiers and the girls become sexual slaves.

Joseph Kony is indicted for war crime by the International Criminal Court since 2005 but nobody can find and arrest him. So … We all wonder : why?

Mostly because he is invisible, before the video and the association meetings almost no one knew what he does. We can ask ourselves no one knows so no one cares? (but this is another debate).

Invisible Children organization’s main aim is to reveal him to the world and “make him famous”. And they do that by using some marketing tips. For example they upload some videos and they spread the world with posters and meetings.

3 examples of posters

They planed an event “Cover Night” on April 20th where everyone has to stick posters “Kony 2012” everywhere over the world. They sell theses kits for a few dollars. They are supported by politicians and celebrities. But this operation is contested on the internet…

Here is the main reason:

 Invisible Children used only 32% of its incomes to directly help the population. The rest was used to pay the employees, the trips, the documentary production and the concrete operation.

What I think about that: their target and objectives were clear: make Kony famous in order to arrest him and finally help people. This is completely different than the objective "to help people". By spending money to “make him famous” and not to help directly people they are right with their plan.

Here you can watch the documentary to understand the situation. Yes it's such a better explaination :)

Cécile P