• by Larry Dobrow , Featured Columnist, December 17, 2015

I’m out this week on a mission so harrowing and secretive that disclosing even its general premise would rattle the foundation of your being – indeed, the foundations of western civilization as we know it. So rather than a vast, lifeless void in the space into which this column usually breathes beautiful life, welcome to another edition of “It’s New 2 U: Critique Classiq.” It’s an attempt to monetize old crap… I mean, give a fresh audience to a “Video Critique” column that was criminally under-nominated for prestigious awards upon original publication.

These two caterpillar’d-together columns are from March and April 2012, when an ambitious good-doer/questionable parent awakened us to the miseries inflicted by Joseph Kony and his roving band of terrorists. We’ve all moved on, but he’s still out there. That can’t be good.

Er, happy Thursday, everybody!

1. Kony 2012 and the branding of Invisible Children

So: the Kony video. Since I spent last week in a nightmare of my own making, I missed the opportunity to OMG about it in concert with the rest of the broadband-enabled universe. In the days since then, the video went hyperviral, awakening sincere 20-somethings to the existence of a exotic realm called “Uganda” and enduring five backlashes and six reverse-backlashes. Then everybody moved on to more pressing matters, before lapping back around for a few finalflurries.

There’s no point in weighing in on the politics - though like many of my fellow patriots, I’d like to go on the record as an opponent of kidnapping-killer-warlord-type people. There’s also no point in debating or analyzing the Kony video’s rhetorical approach. It is framed in such a manner that only two conclusions can be reached - Kony bad! People trying to awaken ruling class to Kony’s badness, especially passionate scarf-wearing filmmaker dad guy, good! - and, as such, is as brilliant, heartbreaking, infuriating and emotionally and intellectually manipulative as any viral-minded campaign of its ilk.

No, I’d rather confine my discussion to branding effectiveness - namely, how other organizations, both for- and non-profit, can brand itself as indelibly as Invisible Children, a relatively obscure NGO as late as ten days ago, has via the Kony campaign. Here’s what such groups need to do.

1. Find a bogeyman: Never mind that Central Africa will remain pretty well screwed whether or not Kony is brought to justice. Invisible Children shrewdly recognizes that a laundry list of human-rights abuses and humanitarian concerns won’t generate the same gut response as honing the pitchforks for a single oily despot.

In essence, the video is a wanted-dead-or-alive poster for the social-media age, even as it tells us priceless little about Kony. Who are his partners in crime? Where did he come from? What motivates him? That’s all beside the point. Just look at the photos - he’s a bad dude. Heck to Betsy, his eyes are as black as his soul! And now he’s trending on Twitter. That’ll learn him.

2. Play the “won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children?“ card: As a new parent, I’m starting to understand that nothing awakens the inner vigilante like a threat to vulnerable kids. This horrific element of the Kony savagery doesn’t need to be double-dramatized, but Invisible Children plays it up all the same.

The pivotal moment to this end is the filmmaker’s decision to document his five-year-old son’s introduction to Kony, via the following master class in parental communication: “Joseph Kony, he has, uh, an army, okay? And what he does is he takes children from their parents, and he gives them a gun to shoot, and he makes them shoot and kill other people.” Me, I’ll probably wait until the cable provider yanks ESPN in a dispute over carriage fees before awakening my kid to mankind’s inherent barbarism, but I’m old-fashioned that way.

3. Self-aggrandize like nobody’s watching: Outside of adding testimonials from Ban Ki-moon or Bono, Invisible Children couldn’t have positioned itself and its mission as any braver or more noble-intentioned. Truly, the video ranks among the most self-impressed pieces of marketing and branding in the history of the Internet. Here’s a brief list of pronouncements: “We are not just studying human history - we are shaping it,” “if we succeed, we change the course of human history,” “our goal is to change the conversation about culture,” “nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come [‘has come’ then bleeds into ‘is now’]”, etc.

Is it true? Sure, because the man in the well-edited, dramatically scored, neatly packaged video says so (note the presence of subtitles, even when the speaker’s voice is clear). Invisible Children, and those who follow in its righteous path, need only pray that the real world doesn’t intrude on its spotlight dance, whether in the form of an equally dramatic humanitarian crisis or another Kanye West awards-show tantrum. Nonetheless, here’s hoping that when somebody rubs Kony out, the real New York Times front page apes the fake one produced for the video (which heralds his takedown in the same font/point size as the headline that ran on September 12, 2001, complete with a “The World agrees, Kony is the ‘Worst’” subhed). Really.

4. Brand your supporters: Those who have rallied behind the Invisible Children banner come off better in the video than anyone except the filmmaker and his mop-haired scamp of a kid. Just look at the orderliness with which they assemble for the cameras! And they’re such a multiculturally diverse bunch, and so young and good-looking, and several of them play the acoustic guitar (Bob Marley covers, I have to assume).

Here’s the thing, though. If the Invisible Child movement is so huge and unstoppable, why hasn’t anyone attempted to bring me into its fold until now? What about me doesn’t appeal to the fresh-faced masses? I’m almost thin and blessed with favorably aligned eyebrows. Will they accept me as one of their own, or have I missed the cute-coordinated-outrage boat? Sad.

5. Get to the damn point: This is a teensy gripe, actually. Invisible Children devotes the first eight minutes of the video to quick-cut montages, turbo-zoom-from-above map views and babble about connectedness and community. With the sound off, you might think you’re watching a commercial for Google+.

The first mention of Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army comes at the 8:46 mark, which is six minutes too late. Hell, even the Dalai Lama knows that immediate blind outrage is the most effective kind. Also, we don’t really need to hear about how the group has targeted 20 “culture makers,” including Ben Affleck and Taylor Swift. It can’t be that crucial to get buy-in from the folks in the gifting suite at the People’s Choice awards, can it?

6. Have a response at the ready: Invisible Children had to know it would be hammered by any number of critics, especially since some believe that the organization is - how can I put this elegantly? - full of fraud and full of shit. Kudos, then, to whoever prepared this comprehensive primer in advance of the video’s debut. The Kony campaign is as subtle as a fart in a spacesuit, as my grandfather was fond of saying; so too have been the responses and counter-responses. Preparedness is underrated, in PR as in mountaineering.

*****

2. A breakdown of Kony 2012: Part II – Beyond Famous

When we last checked in on those crazy Kony kids, they were busy fomenting societal change by wearing color-coordinated shirts and raising their fists on cue. So it wasn’t any surprise when the film’s immediate success prompted a vicious backlash, claiming one of the filmmakers in its wake. Hey, they kind of asked for it.

But that presented a real problem for Invisible Children, the group behind the campaign. Jason Russell’s public meltdown, coupled with extensive debate over the film’s tone, tactics and loosey-goosey conveyance of the facts, threatened to overshadow its efforts to focus attention on the barbarism of Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army. And then the same techno-virality that fueled Kony 2012’s ascent started to work against it. After all, we live in a short-attention-span society, where the next big cause/curiosity/calamity is only a click away and… ooh, look, that dog has a puffy tail!

Thus the obvious move was to re-don the pants of compassion and release a sequel: “Kony 2012: Part II - Beyond Famous,” which arrived this morning. Following the most viral video in the history of Internet contagion would seem to present a daunting challenge, especially given the attention any/all new Kony volleys are likely to receive. But to the filmmakers’ credit, the second Kony go-round mostly dodges the artifice and gasbaggery of the first. It makes a far more persuasive case for action and involvement, appealing less to the heart than to the head.

I’m not big on the whole kicking-a-guy-when-he’s-down thing, but Russell’s absence has a lot to do with this. The first Kony film was as much about him - his commitment, his saintliness, his on-the-sleeve passion - as it was about the cause. The second film, by comparison, largely steers clear of white guys with excellent wavy hair, instead using on-the-ground organizers as its primary talking heads. This focuses attention back where it belongs: on the cause.

So what are the other differences? Kony II is 10 minutes shorter than its predecessor. It tones down the rhetoric, abandoning huge-picture “people have the power!” pronouncements in favor of ones stressing the importance of keeping the issue on the radar of elected officials. It limits the inclusion of comely young people wearing hipster glasses to a mere 35.

Most importantly, it features precisely zero scenes that document a young child’s response to dialogues like “there’s this evil man named Kony, and he’s running wild in the forest with a bunch of murderous pals, and he kidnaps boys and girls just like you, and he never lets them have dessert. Okay, time to go to bed. Sleep well!” It can’t be overstated how much this helps. The scenes in Kony I featuring Russell and his bright-eyed, mop-topped scamp were pure gimmickry, and failed to draw the intended analogy to the lost childhoods of Ugandan children. Direct testimony from members of affected families, abundant in Kony II, is far more powerful and far less manipulative.

You can skip the film’s last five minutes, when Invisible Children lapses back into smart-phones-and-Twitter-are-implements-of-revolution mode (“We are a new generation of justice, made for such a time as this,” “For the first time in history, the people of the world can see each other… this changes everything”). And you can ignore the few hasty bits devoted to addressing the criticism of Kony I, which try but fail to show some small degree of self-awareness. But don’t discount the effort or the noble intentions, or the skill with which the filmmakers make their case. Give Invisible Children credit: they’ve learned from their mistakes.