Written by Jonas Klit Nielsen
A weekend of turbulent debate surrounding the viral campaign “Danish Mother Seeking” is coming to an end.
After giving an interview to TV2 Nyhederne (Danish National news), they have returned and told me that they will bring the story of who is behind in the 7 pm News.
The biggest issue of the mysterious campaign is now if it has been a success or not.
If there was a good cause behind the video on YouTube that might be able to justify its attempt to gather support and sympathy – then we could understand. The only problem is, there doesn’t seem to be.
Our hope would be that a campaign like this, which obviously plays with people’s emotions, would at least be used to promote a good cause, like children needing parents. But sadly that doesn’t seem to be the case.
To the untrained eye there is no way of knowing that ‘Danish Mother Seeking’ isn’t real. There is no way of knowing that by helping Karen spread her video to help her find the father of her baby, one isn’t helping Karen, one is helping someone else get attention. And that is essentially in our opinion what’s wrong with the campaign.
When we first saw the video on YouTube we were 95% certain that it was fake, and we were surprised about the number of people all over the world caring for Karen and little baby boy August. After writing that we thought it was fake, we made the YouTube video ‘Danish Mother Seeking (The Father’s Story)’ hoping that it would make people realise that the whole think was fake. We made the response to Karen’s video as a comic relief, and we made sure that it was obvious that ‘the father’ was false. We did this by using fake teeth, bad acting (sorry Sebastian) and a strong Danish accent. And by uploading the video to Mindjumper’s YouTube Channel, we made it easy for people to find out that the ‘father’ was actually the creative director of Mindjumpers.
When the hunt about finding the people behind the campaign went in we had a lot of different angles on who could be behind. Who would make a viral success like this using a lie to play with people’s emotions? In our opinion they must have either miscalculated what social media is about (in short social media is about humans, feelings, thoughts and transparency and about people interacting with each other) or have a good enough cause to justify the campaign methods.
Now the next chapter is going to be interesting. Looking at the amount of views the video has gotten on YouTube the campaign has been a huge success. It has created a lot of awareness. But the awareness has been created under false pretences – under a lie and it will probably end up pushing people away from whichever brand or product is behind it instead of pulling people closer like advertising is supposed to do
As a company working with social media and believing that these new media are powerful and that they are a must for brands, businesses and organisations to be a part of, it scares us a little to see a campaign build on lies and secrecy. This campaign might even end up scaring organisations away from using the social media platforms because of all the negative response it might end up getting.
Brands, businesses and organisations play an important part in these new media. At Mindjumpers we believe that companies can use social media campaigns to do something good in the world. Cases like Kelloggs Cares, Target and organisations like Charity:Water or LIVESTRONG are successful proof that you can create a powerful social media platform from where your brand can interact with people and at the same time contribute to a greater good.
But lets see what the next couple of days will bring the debate and how the world will react on the misleading Karen campaign.
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