KONY 2012

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

• Codes & Conventions: What techniques does Kony 2012 ad use to persuade the audience to donate some money to the foundation?

The colours of the poster used in the advertisement is red. Red connotes hot. It's a strong color that conjures up a range of seemingly conflicting emotions from passionate love to violence and warfare. The colour, red also links in what director is like as he is a passionate about saving the children and making the world a better place for his own children to live in, Unlike Joseph Kony who links in with a negative representation of red which is violence and war, he also creates catastrophic environment to keep his power. This able the audience to have a view that the director and voice-over wants to help to keep the Uganda in order and save the younger generation.       

The voice-over also is the director who published the video. He is also anchoring the moving images to help audience to understand what the advertisement is about and explains what the image is about and voice-over are normally called the voice of god as for the audience it sounds like someone from above is speaking to them and makes them believe that is what they should be listening to.  

Also they show multiple of screen projectors at 21:44 at the beginning of the extract showing projection screens explaining to the audience how we; the audience can help and then the screens collapsed into a newspaper for the future capturing Joseph Kony to show the audience that is what they are aiming to do.  

• Representation: How is the ethnicity represented in the Kony 2012 ad?

Ethnicity is represented in two ways as there is binary opposition proposed in the advert for Kony as this is Levi Strauss and in the advertisement it shows that black and whites who are normally contrasted against each other are joining together. This could have a effect of identification and nostalgic effect as a uses and gratification theory of Blummer & Katz  on a older audience as they remember the times of segregation and when blacks and whites were not allowed to associated with each other.


But in other light it shows good v/s evil, that Joseph who is black is shown to be a evil and bad who kidnaps kids plus a villain in a way which portrays Vladimir Propp of characters theory   this could relate back to the audience as they have been stereotyped in the advertisement as other people will think they are all the same. Furthermore the whites have been shown to be on the good side or the hero as he or them trying to say them.        

• Media Institution: How is the brand image of Kony promoted in the advertisement?

The brand image promotes of Kony is promoted of going viral as it has been deployed in many  countries such as the top countries where the countries could help Uganda in the search of Kony and the countries which helped it go viral or helped it to globalized. Globalization is a another uses and gratification theory which allows media text or any type of text to go global in which this video has it has been published and taken action in many countries such as London, USA, Europe and China.

Another way, that the brand of stopping Kony is promoted is by having the support of celebrities such as Angelina jolie and Rihanna and they promote the stop Kony via twitter and hash tagging which also spreads the message fast and quicker than print like posters and it is also easier to share or comment on it and this is why the riots in London and Arab countries happened.      

• Audience: On the basis of this ad, who does the Kony 2012 advert trying to appeal to?

The Stop Kony advert appeals to the all types of ages as the director is trying to inform and educate everyone who kony is and why he is around and he shows and example of this by educating his own son about who Joseph Kony is.   

The socio-economic class that this mostly appeals to is ABC1 as they can take more action as they are more qualified and entitled to say in the community as they earn more and can do a lot more to save the planet from like Kony.