One of my biggest fas­ci­na­tions lately is the usage of social media to spread causes. Of the many medi­ums used, I would like to share with you 2 of my favorite idea-viral social media videos, decon­struct­ing them as I go along. The videos are: The Girl Effect and Obama’s Yes We Can.

Here’s how we break it down:

1) We start with an idea. The girl effect had this fact sheet and Obama had a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign to sell.

2) The ques­tion: How do we get peo­ple to care? How can we cre­ate a movement?

3) Now, think about it. What would you do if you were in their sit­u­a­tion? What is the most effec­tive way of reach­ing as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble given our resources and mes­sage? Many of us who are try­ing to fund-raise for a cause, run­ning for an elec­tion — think for a minute what you have done in this same sit­u­a­tion.   Most of us would use Word-Of-Mouth sup­port, news­pa­pers, per­sonal web­sites, face­book with per­sonal net­works, and often; that is more than enough.

But what if instead, the peo­ple you are try­ing to reach out to, instead of being your uni­ver­sity, is mag­ni­fied thou­sands times fold to a nation?   And to add in another clincher, what if you only had 4 min­utes to sell your idea?

4) Now, watch both videos. That’s what they came up with.

The Girl Effect

Yes, we can

5) Both videos are have their dis­sim­i­lar­i­ties, but decon­struct­ing the videos fur­ther, here’s what I was most drawn by both concepts:

1) Usage of typog­ra­phy and colours. Less is more. Both videos only have 3 colours — black, white, red (Yes, we can) or orange (the girl effect). Bril­liant. Often colours can over­whelm the sense and take away from the main mes­sage. This way, the chang­ing of colours of the typog­ra­phy, draw us in towards the impor­tance of the words and the weight that they carry.

Yes,  we can: notice that words only appear after the main punch of the speech is deliv­ered, and the words merely give us a rein­forc­ing ‘graph­i­cal’ rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what was said earlier.

The girl effect: how many videos do you know that are made up of purely only words, that you are hooked onto every let­ter. Note the effects of ‘sink­ing’, stretch­ing of typog­ra­phy on words like ‘prof­its’, and how the typog­ra­phy seem to take a life and mean­ing of the words they present.

2) Music — Music is an ele­ment that tran­scends race, cul­ture, and the merg­ing of a bril­liant score with the magic of the inter­net is a win­ning combination.

Yes, we can: Notice that the main mes­sage of Obama that his cam­paign team wants to be deliv­ered — Yes we can, we want change, is spo­ken and chanted through­out the music video, solid­i­fy­ing the phrase in your mind even after you have fin­ished watch­ing the video. This video is one of the most beau­ti­ful har­mo­niza­tions of speech and song, bal­anc­ing the seri­ous­ness of the mes­sage and catchy tune that occurs through­out the video. To add to the polit­i­cal feel of the video, they threw in chants in the back­ground — just like one would expe­ri­ence in a polit­i­cal rally.

On top of all of that, they used singers that have dif­fer­ent pitch classes, com­bin­ing them in polyphony, a tex­ture con­sist­ing of two or more inde­pen­dent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dom­i­nant melodic voice cre­at­ing the order of each unique voice fit­ting into the pic­ture of ’ yes, we can’. It cre­ates the effect of being inclu­sive and united — great delivery.

The girl effect: When words fail us, music speaks, and the mak­ers of The Girl Effect, used purely instru­men­tal music to evoke the emo­tions that they want. First, choice of music — clas­si­cal, with­out words, draw­ing the view­ers of the video into the words. The music is there to cre­ate and enhance the emo­tion. It starts with a piano intro­duc­tion with (I’m guess­ing — do cor­rect me if i am wrong) a xylo­phone car­ry­ing the melody of the piece. Bril­liant choice of instru­men­ta­tion as its bright, sharp tones are often asso­ci­ated with the ‘aha!!’ moments — like a bell going off in our heads.

Usage of pauses cre­ates the dra­matic effect — See 0:32s into the video the cli­max of  where the reg­is­ter of the piece, moves into the higher octaves and stop­ping abruptly before the pre­sen­ta­tion of the main idea (0:32s) — A Girl with a sin­gle chord. The music after this, takes on a beau­ti­ful homophony, a tex­ture in which two or more parts move together in har­mony, the rela­tion­ship between them cre­at­ing chords, lay­er­ing in idea after idea, part after part, build­ing upon the foun­da­tion of the main idea — A Girl. Another pause occurs at 1:40s when another idea is presented.

The music then moves to a Devel­op­ment stage– pre­sent­ing what hap­pens with a girl is helped, before mod­u­lat­ing back to the orig­i­nal theme that was pre­sented at the start. Notice that the move­ment of the piece is pre­sented in A-B-A theme, the “A” parts address­ing what you can do and what you should do, and “B” part, what a girl can do. Great under­ly­ing dis­tinc­tion of what you can do and what a girl can do using music, isn’t it?

3) Pre­sen­ta­tion of idea. An idea which advo­cates change needs to engage an audi­ence on these three lev­els: Visu­al­iza­tion, cred­i­bil­ity and impact ( micro –> macro). An audi­ence needs to be able to relate to your idea, to actu­ally think that your idea is worth­while, and to be able to see its impact.

Yes, we can:

Cred­i­bil­ity: obvi­ously the use of big movie stars and singers were a great draw, espe­cially in terms of draw­ing the type of audience.

Visual: The image of Obama pre­sent­ing his speech through­out the video inter­change­able with images of the singers.

Impact — the core mes­sage of this video is, besides “yes we can” is to VOTE. Sim­ple action on a micro level, but huge on an macro level: all you have to do is fill out a bal­lot and watch change unfold. Evi­dently, it worked!

The Girl Effect: Now this a lit­tle trick­ier with lim­ited funds and resources. What do you do then? You sell your video line by line. Curios­ity always kills the cat, and the video is built on a ques­tion– answer basis.

Cred­i­bil­ity: They build a con­crete idea with­out over­whelm­ing you and by appeal­ing log­i­cally step by step to things that have been done.

Visual: they ask you to visu­al­ize in a a form of a sim­ple story line, what a girl can do in her village.

Impact: they then mul­ti­ply the idea of help­ing a sin­gle girl by 600 mil­lion girls in devel­op­ing nations and com­bined with a bril­liant use of dots mul­ti­ply­ing across your screen — voila, you’re not only hit with the visual impact, but the micro to macro shift in idea.

2 min­utes later you’re left sit­ting in your chair think­ing — man, that was awe­some and that totally can happen.

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So, the next time you want to spread a cause you believe in, think about the mes­sage you are send­ing with your colours, typog­ra­phy, music and pre­sen­ta­tion: visual, cred­i­bil­ity and impact (micro to macro).
Maybe, you’ll be able to cre­ate the aware­ness and change that you are look­ing for.