Can Kony 2012?s Viral Success Be Repeated? ‘Half The Sky’ Is Taking a Stab

Non-profit Invisible Children's 30-minute Kony 2012 documentary stunned the Internet back in March, as it became the most viral video of all time through the strength of social media users and the almighty hashtag. Kony 2012 never aired on television nor was it screened in cinemas, yet more than 100 million people have seen the video on YouTube or Vimeo.

This week, a two-part PBS documentary Half The Sky is hoping to achieve similar viral success. Though Kony sparked its share of controversy, it undoubtedly changed the rules of intent-driven documentary in the social space. Half the Sky took notes on Invisible Children's successes.

"One element of Kony that was very good was the ground presence, they visited high schools," Liriel Higa, social strategist for Show of Force Productions who worked with the Half the Sky team, told Mashable. "Kony 2012 started trending in certain cities with big presences ahead of time. Half the Sky has very compelling content, too. But we don't have the years that lead up."

A Calculated Campaign

To an unfamiliar eye, Kony 2012's success seemed accidental. Though the co-founders of Invisible Children had spent the past half decade visiting high schools and college campuses, building a network of supporters, few people knew of Joseph Kony or his crimes who had not encountered the organization Invisible Children.

"Kony 2012 was a different beast; the challenge we're writing about is very different," Sheryl WuDunn, co-author with her husband Nicholos Kristof of the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, told Mashable. "Kony is one enemy, and went viral because it's one bad guy. Half the Sky isn't one bad guy, so it's much more difficult to communicate around challenges that are much more varied and diverse."

Half the Sky, as a movement, faces different challenges. The 2009 book that spurred the movement was a New York Times best-seller. Like Invisible Children, Half the Sky has built a presence on college campuses across the country, where groups are hosting viewing parties Monday and Tuesday. Unlike Invisible Children, the work of which is focused on Joseph Kony specifically, Half the Sky is about the issues facing women and girls across the world.

Given the ubiquity of discussions of women's issues, can Half the Sky be a wake up call for these issues? The movement hopes its diverse team's social following can help out with that.

New York Times columnist Kristof, the paper's first blogger and a journalist touted for his early embrace of digital platforms, has more than 1.3 million followers on Twitter. Two actresses featured in the documentary have major followings as well — Gabrielle Union has more than 800,000 and Olivia Wilde has more than 650,000. These influencers' tweets and use of the #HalftheSky hashtag are part of a social strategy to drive lasting conversation.

But the social outreach doesn't stop with Twitter — Kristof did a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) Sept. 24. A user-generated Tumblr blog collects pictures and responses to the prompt "Women Hold Up Half the Sky Because …." When you check in to each night of the Half the Sky premiere on GetGlue, you earn one half of the Half the Sky sticker. A second screen experience is available through Yap.TV.

The Half the Sky movement has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Tumblr, Google+ and Foursquare, as well as a Facebook game and three mobile games for women in the developing world. The movement is also running a 30 Songs for 30 Days campaign, offering one song donated from a different leading female artist for download each day.

"The book, the documentary and the Facebook game have very different audiences," WuDunn says. "We're trying to reach very different audiences, where they're most likely to go."

Kevin Dando, director of digital marketing and communications at PBS, the network airing the documentary, says the movement ran targeted Twitter ads around the U.N. General Assembly hashtag #UNGA and the Clinton Global Initiative's #CGI2012.

"I think this is one of the most unified efforts PBS has ever done; no equivocation," Dando told Mashable.

Creating a Movement

Though it may be a long time before any documentary achieves the number of views or amount of time trending on Twitter as "Kony 2012? did, the Half the Sky team is hoping to create a sustainable movement that will outlive a Twitter trend.

"What we're really after is bringing this loosely formed movement's skills to solve one part of this great problem, whether that's maternal mortality, sex trafficking, or violence against women," WuDunn says. "That effort needs lawyers, doctors, marketers, computer programmers — people of all walks of life."

That movement was already started by the book, though. Two high school juniors Caroline White and Anna Cate Peeples, inspired by the book, have begun a campaign to raise $300,000 to fund a safe house for 200 orphans. So far, they've hit $30,000 of their goal. Another teenage girl, 14-year-old Avery McCall, raised $36,000 for non-profit Circle of Sisterhood after reading the book. Half the Sky doesn't promote one charity over the other, it simply seeks to get people talking about these issues.

"We're relying on them to be our core audience," Higa says, who notes that you can read stories about girls like these teenagers on Half the Sky's blog. "We're hoping that people who wouldn't read the book will watch the documentary."

Can Half the Sky Succeed?

During the first half of its broadcast, the hashtag #HalftheSky trended on Twitter in the U.S. During the East Coast screening, some 265 tweets per minute mentioned the documentary.

"This kind of reach is unprecedented for a social issue documentary on PBS," said Jonathan Archer, a social media strategist for Half the Sky partner Independent Television Service.

If you miss the initial live showing, each segment of the documentary will stream on PBS for one week after the initial air date.

But can Half the Sky reach Kony's level of social media chatter — more than 12.5 million tweets in the month following its release?

Part two premieres on Tuesday evening.