Kony 2012 and the Hero’s Journey

­Kony 2012 is now the most viral video in history. It has surpassed 100 million views in 6 days, and generated thousands more blogs, news stories, and response films. While the film was a huge success in terms of virality, much of the feedback and news that followed its initial boom was highly critical both of the organization, Invisible Children, and some of the choices they made in the film itself.

Creator and narrator Jason Russell decided to apply a Joseph Campbell-esque hero narrative for the film. The kind of hero story you see in Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and also Wall-E, Up, and The Lion King. Our brains are actually predisposed to search out these kinds of stories, one of the reasons all of the above movies are so incredibly popular. The issue that Invisible Children encountered is one of the best reminders that life is not as simple as the movies.

The narrative frame of the hero’s journey is incredibly powerful, and is a great tool for anyone with a cause to promote. The mistake Russell made was in the implementation. Kony 2012 gripped you because it told a complete story. There was a clear quest (arrest Kony), threat (continued child abduction and other inhumane acts), villain (Joseph Kony), heroes (Invisible children and us, the internet community), heroes’ tools (social media, the U.S government, and the Ugandan military), and villains’ weapons (violence and fear). Each one is clear and anyone watching the film would come away with something very close to these same answers.

The backlash came from a number of places. First, their quest does not defeat the threat they identify. The arrest of Kony will help, but by no means will it end a long-standing history of violent and inhumane behavior. For one, the Ugandan military has been accused of the same crimes used to villainize Kony. That brings us to their second misstep. Our hero’s tools cannot be questionably bad. By using tools that could be considered as objectionable as the villain, our narrative loses an amazing amount of credibility.

Credibility is also very important for our Hero. Invisible children made themselves a hero in this narrative, but they lost a good deal of credibility quickly when a number of blogs pointed out that they spend less than 31% of their budget on direct relief.

We now have a hero with questionable intentions, using tools that reportedly commit the same crimes their villain commits, and a quest that will likely not end the threat. These major warning signs caused the huge backlash against the film.

So what should we learned from Kony 2012? We should understand that a well told hero narrative is an extremely powerful way to tell a story. However, we should know that we cannot sacrifice the integrity of whatever our issue may be to create a compelling message. It is unfair to the people you are fighting for. Jason Russell and Invisible children learned this the hard way. While they may well have had good intentions, they sacrificed the integrity of their message by misrepresenting the issue they are supposed to be deeply involved in.

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Obama’s record needs a voice.

In a recent Newsweek article, writer Andrew Sullivan compared the criticisms President Obama is receiving now against his actual record over the last four years. What he found were two very different people.

What I took away from the article was simple. Obama needs our help more now than he did in 2008, and he deserves it. He is not getting the grandeur and sainthood of his 2008 campaign back, and he can no longer be the first black president in our history. What he can be is the president that turned this country around, but he needs our help to get there.

The right attacks him for being a welfare president who wants to grow the tax money devouring government to insane proportions, give your money to lazy people, and tell you how to live your life. The reality? Obama has shifted more jobs to the private sector than when Ronald Reagan was in office, has put a floor on the collapsing economy preventing a possible depression, and has lowered taxes on most Americans. He has also passed a health care bill based around an idea pioneered by the Heritage Foundation and two others who have been in the news recently, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.

Sullivan writes, “Bush’s new policies on taxes and spending cost the taxpayer a total of $5.07 trillion. Under Obama’s budgets both past and projected, he will have added $1.4 trillion in two terms. Under Bush and the GOP, non-defense discretionary spending grew by twice as much as under Obama.” Take the names away and it would be hard to believe that the Republicans have been attacking the second guy for out of control spending.

Democrats have had their own criticisms, calling Obama a tool of Wall Street, denouncing his attempts to work across party lines, and diminishing his weak stimulus and financial reform.

Sullivan writes that everyone seems to be missing two vital things. First, no one seems to see how much Obama has actually accomplished. The other is Obama’s long run strategy that is responsible for many of his successes. Instead of settling for short-term political victories, he has fought for what he could get done in the long run to help this country.

This strategy often left him vulnerable, without the shiny new political victory to flash in front of us. It left many people who voted for him wondering what had happened, why he looked so week at times, and against many strategists advice, willing to let others define him.

The short answer is that he was doing it to make this country better. But it was and is a risky strategy, and without a little help, it may not give him the second term he deserves.

The Republican candidates have been playing the typical (and effective) conservative strategy. Repeat the same values laden messages over and over again and pin everything possible on the president. The Koch brothers recently got together with their friends and pledged $100 million dollars towards defeating Obama in the fall. Because of Obama’s long game mentality, he is susceptible to these kinds of attacks.

That is where we come in. Obama needs us now more than ever. With our help, he will continue his fight to work for America, not work for whatever he can take credit for.

Like Clint Eastwood reminded us during the Super Bowl, evoking Reagan’s famous political ad, it is halftime in America. If we play our cards right, it can be halftime in President Obama’s time in office. This country is starting to turn around thanks in large part to our president; we have momentum with 23 consecutive months of job growth. Now is not the time to kill that momentum by changing leaders. Now is the time for us to work hard to give Obama his deserved second term, and for all of us to complete the comeback that we, together, have so miraculously started.

 

 

 

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Millennial Momentum

Being told you are the generation to change the world is an interesting experience. It is especially interesting when it is backed up by hundreds of years of generational research. GuentherMedia just took a trip to the bay area to hear Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais talk about their latest book, Millennial Momentum. As you might guess, it is about the millennial generation (born roughly 1982-2003) and how we are the generation that will bring this country out of its funk. It is a fascinating book loaded with research about a cycle of generations that appears to be a pattern in this country since its inception.

Now candidly, I was a bit of an easy sell since the book was all about how my generation was going to change the world. However, the majority of the boomers and x-ers in the room, though some skeptical at first, largely embraced this message by the end. Both authors had an amazingly comprehensive understanding of the research. They went as far as predicting what type of health care system is more likely as millennials begin to dominate the voting age population. You will have to pick up the book to learn its other pearls of wisdom and predictions.

If nothing else, this book is a glimmer of hope in a very tough time. It paints a bright picture for the future of the United States, where giving back to your country and community, pragmatism, and equality are the unifying characteristics. At a time when little seems to be progressing, and the government seems more dysfunctional than ever, a generation that is defined by their desire to work for the good of one another seems to be just what we need as a nation.

Only time will tell whether all of these predictions come true. It is hard to estimate how big an impact things like the Internet and access to information have on generational theory. However, the early information we have on the millennial generation seems to say that the cycle is still on track, as millenials are already exhibiting the characteristics that make us more like our great-grandparents than our parents. So for progressives, hope remains in the form of the young people of our country, and lucky for us, history is on our side.

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It’s On Us

 

The story Barack Obama has told over the past couple years has been a very different one than many of us thought we would hear when we voted for him in 2008.  Where did this gap come from, and what can we do to get the Obama of “Yes we can!” back?

Psychologist and author Drew Westen offers several answers in a recent New York Times piece.  I have one to add.

We, as a progressive movement, need to give the President a consistent story worth telling.  It is on us to show the President the single story of our movement so that he can represent us.  It is up to us to show that we are united by values, and most important, that they are the values of most Americans today.

When the stakes are this high, our voices become critical.  But that doesn’t mean we become a nation of critics.

Voices that sing together send a much louder and more resonant message than voices yelling at one another.

The President cannot tell our story unless he understands it inside and out. That makes our task to find the story that unites us and sing it together until no one can get it out of their head.

Dan Rather says, “I think our history shows that if we don’t get leadership soon, we the people will demand it ourselves.” RebuildTheDream.com is beginning to do this. It is an organization attempting to put the focus of the government back where it should be, on the people.  They are fighting back against those who want to take away support, equality and opportunity from Americans.  Their story is clear, concise, and value based, and because of this, their membership is growing faster than the Tea Party did at a similar point.

Guenther Media is continuing to work with the Progress Alliance and others to define our progressive story and deliver it in a way that helps us all get to a better place.

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A Hero’s Journey

Kurt and Sam meet with Drew Westen

An unprecedented gathering aims to change the way we tell our stories of social change and achievement. Recent college grad Sam Holman and GuentherMedia founder Kurt Guenther reflect on the experience.

I recently spent 3 days at a retreat with some of the best and brightest from the progressive movement in Washington as well national leaders.  Being 22, I was by far the youngest person there (I photographed the event for free so I could get in.) Because I was the only person there in my early 20′s, I spent a lot of time thinking about our generation’s place in this country and how we got here.

The retreat was an incredibly energizing experience that was rich with creative and brilliant ideas. All of the great conversation was geared towards creating a new narrative for promoting the progressive movement and there were so many inspiring people and ideas that there are hundreds of things to write about.  From all that, there are two ideas that stood out to me as a newcomer to this world, and both of them came from Van Jones.

One of Van’s opening lines was a great window into the rest of his speech and my experience at the retreat.  “I am not here for the future of the progressive movement, I am here for the future of America.”  This idea, that patriotism has a home in the liberal, progressive world, is something that has been so far removed from my concept of the movement and my own beliefs.  The conservatives have done such a good job at linking patriotism to their ideas, that we have basically relinquished ownership of it.  In fact, patriotism is almost a dirty word to many like-minded people of my generation.

When I think about the American flag, I used to run to images of flag waiving confederates, war, and Sarah Palin’s tour bus.  After hearing Van speak, I know it represents so much more.  I am in that flag, and that flag is in me.  I may not like many of the things that the right wing has worked so hard to embed into the flag, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love my country, and it doesn’t mean I won’t fight for it and its people.

Van’s speech gave me the ability to feel like a patriot, and not have to give that ground up in progressive circles. It is time for the progressive movement to let patriotism into its core, because, as Van said, “You cannot lead a country without loving it first.”

Now, all this being said, loving this country doesn’t mean loving everything it does, and it definitely doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight for the America we want in the future.  I did not leave this retreat with a feeling of acceptance for the issues we are facing, but I did leave with a great deal of hope and enthusiasm for future we can create.  Again, I can thank Van Jones a great deal for this.

I was in need of a brief history lesson in our government’s successes.  Van, in a way few can, reminded us that every politician that is credited with progressive and needed change, (civil rights, environmental protection, labor unions,) was following a movement, not leading it.  Every president that signed a groundbreaking new act into our history did so because a movement made it possible.  This is an empowering thought, but it’s also so much more.  It puts the citizen firmly in the political process, demonstrating that the U.S. government is actually for, of, and by the people.  That is not a thought that my generation has seen much evidence of.  Again, our government has chains wrapped around its feet these days, from all those villains we hear so much about (greedy corporations, freeloading banks, etc.)

What I took away from this retreat is that the American people know that these things are the enemy of a growing middle class and the country as a whole.  They know that they don’t like corporate money controlling their elected representatives.  Drew Westen, a leading cognitive scientist and linguist, was also in attendance.  His research has shown that our country agrees with these ideas, that no one likes the control that big money has over Washington D.C. What they don’t know is that we can remove these shackles; we can unbind the legs that have constrained our country from helping its people.

Could Van Jones have convinced me to buy a broken toaster-oven? Probably.  Nonetheless, after sitting with these ideas for a couple days, they haven’t lost any of their validity.  I think selling patriotism and the importance of government to the millennial generation is among the more important steps we can take, even though it is in many ways an uphill battle.  First, we need to realize that our government is more than Capitol Hill bickering. When I think of government, I don’t think of the entity that keeps our planes from falling out of the sky, keeps me from getting food poisoning, or fixes my roads.  They are doing some things right, and we need to recognize that.

My generation has the image of two parties trying to handcuff each other in an attempt to hold power.  Not a very positive image, but it’s also not the whole story.  The whole story is that we live in a great country that needs us to fight for it.  Loving your country can be as simple as loving the people in it, and I think we can all agree that it is people that we are really fighting for. My generations’ place in this world is beginning to be defined. This movement can be the change that our country needs so that it may be everything we expect.

– Sam

Elle Andrews, Social Innovator

If you’re on this website, you’re likely a fellow social entrepreneur working to improve the common good. Problem is, us “progressives” often do a lousy job of inspiring folks to join us.

This summer, we’ve had an opportunity to help change all that. Working with Ella Andrews, a local innovator in social change, and with the funding group, Washington Progress Alliance, we’ve been looking at ways to rewrite the rules on communicating our common hopes, dreams and vision of the future.

The highlight of this work has been a three-day, intensive “mind meld” at the Talaris Institute this month, with national and local leaders in communicating change, from pollster Lisa Grove to Van Jones to author Drew Westen and more.

Unlike a lot of retreats, this was no summer camp for adults. One intensive session after another helped people look at a new way to frame their issues and messages. People actually grappled with how to identify the villains tearing at this nation’s fabric – the liars, parasites and people who rig the system, from Wall Street to the local community.

“Take your balls out of your purse” was one of the more memorable lines that came from these sessions – challenging one another to set aside the fuzziness of much progressive storytelling and be clear about who is standing up for all us and who is working against us.

I couldn’t be more overjoyed at a room of smart folks agreeing it’s time to do more of this. At GuentherMedia, and before at GMMB, we’ve been driven by our belief in the intelligence and willingness of the American people to do great things together.  Especially when we communicate more about “us” than “me”, about accountability, personal responsibility and the legacy we’re building for the future. When we refuse to give up the American flag and patriotism to the right wing.

The work by Ella, the Alliance and the 50 minds they brought together has already been embraced quickly by national folks.

One more hopeful thing about those days at Talaris: Seeing Sam Holman and Riley Gibson, two 20somethings at GuentherMedia, interact with seasoned minds.  Sam and Riley were the only 20somethings there. If we want progressive efforts to become more successful, 20somethings will need to be at the head table. Their world, their tools and their perspective are so profoundly different. Their collaboration in creating a decent future is essential.

– Kurt

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Together, we’re better

Here’s a key message strategy tip: remember that humans are pack animals.

We’re happier, healthier, and live longer when we surround ourselves with other people. Because being social is such a huge part of being human, we are actually reliant on other people, and not always in the ways you might think.

Subconsciously, we rely on others to make decisions for us.

Keep America Beautiful, an environmental organization, ran a famous public service announcement of a Native American paddling down a river filled with trash.  He lands on the shore, and has more trash thrown by his feet.  A single tear falls down his right cheek.

Littering actually increased in areas where the PSA was shown.  How could this be? Because it shows people…littering!  Simply seeing other people litter justified the act of littering, and made it a larger problem.

The astounding part of this is that this social influence was much stronger than the actual message of the PSA.

The power of “normal behavior” has since been shown in a number of studies, including reuse of towels in hotels.  People were more likely to reuse their towels if a sign read, “2/3rds of this room’s past occupants reused their towels,” than if it said, “Reusing your towels can save thousands of gallons of water and sewage runoff.”  Stunning, but true.

GuentherMedia uses behavioral research in every campaign to help the good guys win. Click here to see the bandwagon effect, combined with humor, used in the victorious campaign of State Legislator Randy Gordon.

Understanding people, respecting their intelligence and responding to their needs…

That’s how we create stories that stick.

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Meet Riley Gibson

Hello, my name is Riley Gibson and I am a student filmmaker interning with GuentherMedia this summer.

Having previously studied film and cultural theory, I come to GuentherMedia with an ever-deepening interest in learning how to use film and video to enlighten and promote creative thinking and understanding.

Moving images change the way we understand the world.  Today, there are more images available, and more methods of accessing them than ever before.  Being able to distribute  stories across previously distinct social groups provides rare opportunities for forming alliances and shared experiences. Where in the past, news and video were only available through a small number of carefully protected sources, today, anyone with a cheap camera and Internet access can navigate the web to contribute their voice and vision to a global audience.

What is it about the social conscience that catapults one image to instant celebrity status?  How can montage, and mise-en-scène combine to inspire wonderment, new ideas, and social change?  How a campaign answers these questions will determine its success.  How that success is furthered separates a fleeting idea from a lasting impression.

I am overjoyed to be working with GuentherMedia, a place where people successfully produce powerful work with thoughtfulness and goodwill.

Contact me at riley@guenthermedia.com

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Meet Sam Holman

Hello! My name is Sam Holman and I spent the last four years at Lewis and Clark College as a psychology major, studying the irrationalities of our choices.

The good news is many of the shortcomings of human information processing can actually be used to make messages more influential and persuasive.  The mind relies on shortcuts. We can design information to appeal to those shortcuts, and help influence behavior in positive ways.

We are constantly pummeled with information, more than our minds can handle, so our brains cut corners, make assumptions, even making odd connections between unrelated things.

Did you know that holding a warm or a cold beverage can change your first impression of the next person you meet? According to a Yale study, holding a warm beverage will make your first impression of a new person much, well…warmer. Incidentally, if you’ve got a first-date coming up, maybe you should go for hot coffee.

The more information out there, the more critical these shortcuts become for capturing attention and creating desired actions.  Ignoring them can be deadly to a campaign.

I’m excited to put what I’ve learned over the past four years to work.  It is especially exciting to get to work with the team at Guenther Media, given their long track record for helping create social change.  Plus, they’re fun.

And that appeals to my brain.

Looking forward to meeting innovators and entrepreneurs here in Seattle. You can reach me by email at sam@guenthermedia.com or by phone at 541-729-6290.

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Spotlight on Pete Droge

Pete Droge makes us feel good. He’s a musician on Vashon who has provided soulful, original music for our ads and films. He’s literally a rock star, with music videos, albums and soundtracks to his name for clients like Cameron Crowe, Grey’s Anatomy and Toyota. Yet Pete’s right here in the same world as the rest of us and he’s reaching out and helping. He even plugged our work together on air last year when we produced the award-winning ads for Equal Rights Washington. Looking forward to more good work with Pete. Check him out at droge.com.

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Yoda and The Warmest Generation

Ethan and Sirita are 20somethings already leading the way. They're founders of GrowFood.org. Check them out and see how local farming can help get where we need to go. We featured them in "Live It!" a film sponsored by Washington Environmental Council.

Hugged a 20something lately? They need us behind them. They’re the Warmest Generation – first to face climate change for a lifetime, and coming of age in a world covered with political hot spots.

They’re the ones who can most change the direction of the future. And the sooner they lead, the better.

This might be tough medicine for boomers.  We’ve spent a lifetime believing we’re awfully special. But reality is, the new generation has been incubated in the age of the internet and it’s wired differently. Capacity to access and process information and create collaborative, inventive solutions is their gig.

We can help them cut corners by showing where we made progress, where we tanked and why. Maybe buttress their sense of hope by walking the talk and deeply investing our time and energy in their leadership, our respect for their ability. And the necessity of their strong vision for our mutual survival.

A lot of smart folks say the planet’s in a tailspin. You think so? Human innovation keeps giving me reasons to reject the worst of the gloom and doom. But with a caveat. After 25 years of research and behavioral change campaigns, I believe it’s likely that most people my age are hardwired with too much fear, bias and stubborn pride to lead us where we need to go.

We can’t be young again. But we could be Yoda.

Kurt Guenther is the Founder and CEO of Guenther Media

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