In July, a video featuring various Lego characters went viral on social media, but the rigors endured by the plastic toys suggested this was no promotional video for the brand. In a chilling doomsday scenario, set to a slowed-down version of the theme song from the recent Lego movie, the entire miniature world slowly drowned in oil.
The video was part of a Greenpeace campaign to make Lego divest from its decades-long partnership with Shell, a company that plans to resume drilling for oil in the Arctic. And the message didn’t go unnoticed: As the video reached more than 4.5 million views in its first week, now well over 6 million, the online media started picking up the story of Greenpeace’s well-produced, viral protest video, generating even more attention around the campaign. On October 8, Lego announced that the company would not be renewing its contract with Shell, ending a million-dollar deal between the world’s most profitable toymaker and one of the world’s largest companies.
“You can send a press release, and it’s maybe not something media outlets will pursue as a story. But when six million people have seen it, they’ll cover it,” says Travis Nichols, Arctic communications manager at Greenpeace. The online buzz allowed the environmental organization to steer the media narrative without having to convince journalists that it was a cause worth covering.
While media-jacking has long been an activism strategy, the digital age provides activists with growing opportunities to manipulate and take advantage of online media and draw awareness to their projects. A number of initiatives have sprung up in recent years aimed at training others to develop effective media strategies, and journalists may want to pay attention as activists smarten up online and get better at using the mainstream media to push their messages.
To some, that seems at odds with the values of progressive activism, but it’s effective nonetheless.
“Just because we’re telling the truth doesn’t mean we have to state it in boring ways that only policy wonks will understand,” says media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. He’s a professor with a new graduate program at Queens College in New York that blends media theory and activism strategy. “I couldn’t find anywhere that’s trying to marry strategic, purposeful media with trying to make the world a better place, even in media and politics programs,” says Rushkoff, who adds that many activists have been reluctant to think strategically about their work in the past as media strategies have been associated with advertising and commercial interests. But even outside the academy, they’re increasingly doing so.
“We do explicitly take advantage of the 24-hour news cycle,” says Mary Notari, general manager and facilitator at the Yes Men’s Yes Lab, a platform for activist campaign development. “The Yes Men is all about hijacking the media narrative in the service of packaging it for a mainstream media audience.” Hoaxes and impersonation tactics are key strategies of the Yes Lab, such as the 2012 hoax carried out by the Yes Men and Greenpeace, who successfully manipulated the media into believing, and spreading, a fake story about Shell.
Yes Lab also recently launched a new online platform for activists who want to ramp up their campaigns, and is involved in a forum for activism at New York University, the Critical Tactics Lab.
The Greenpeace campaign illustrates the potential of such strategies, which are far more involved than just releasing a video and hoping for the best. The trick is to always aim for young people, even if the target audience for a specific campaign is an older generation, according to Joe Wade, director of the creative agency Don’t Panic that produced the Greenpeace-Lego video.
“Gradually, it filters down through the internet,” Wade says. “From Reddit to big blogs like Upworthy, from there it ends up on traditional media platforms, The New York Times and The Guardian. Once it’s there, the older target market will see it.” For the Greenpeace video, the agency used what Wade calls “easter eggs,” subtle references that only make sense to certain subcultures, like a Lego character from Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and the video game Halo. Don’t Panic then spread the video among digitally savvy online fan groups, hoping that they would pick up on the clues and share the video further.
“It’s definitely the case that if you get it right, you get a lot of media value,” says Wade.
And companies like Lego and Shell may just have to get used to the fact that activists no longer shy away from strategies that used to belong in the domain of advertising and corporate PR professionals. But while a viral campaign may gain a lot of attention, it doesn’t guarantee that people actually get involved, understand an issue better, or that any change will be brought about, cautions Patrick Reinsborough, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Story-based Strategy, which helps grassroots movements build effective campaigns.
Past viral campaigns like Kony 2012 and #BringBackOurGirls were criticized for generating a lot of noise through highly emotional campaigns but only involving people at a superficial level. “Social media can be stepping stones, but there’s a real danger that people think that first step is enough,” Reinsborough says.
Many are finding that balance, though, and activist agendas may become more prominent in the media landscape. “Media professionals, the good ones, understand that if they are going to use what we might call cheap tricks to create buzz, then they also need some depth behind the issue so it’s not hollow,” Rushkoff says.
Lene Bech Sillesen is a CJR Delacorte Fellow. Follow her on Twitter at @LeneBechS.