5 Marketing Lessons of the Ice Bucket Challenge

Few could have predicted how swiftly the ALS Ice Bucket challenge would go viral. The way that it spread must have been beyond the wildest imaginings of the ALS marketing team. If you have checked your Twitter feed or your Facebook timeline over the summer, then you cannot fail to have noticed that many of your connections will have been sitting in their gardens, backyards, or workplaces and then having buckets of iced water unceremoniously tipped over their heads, as if some kind of mass mania had gripped the planet. The act was then shared via social media and some further unwitting friends are then nominated to pick up the baton.

A Marketing Phenomenon

For those of you who may have missed it, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has seen celebrities – from Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg - and individuals pouring buckets of ice over their heads for the sake of the ALS charity and then nominating others to take on the feat. analysed how the Challenge went viral and they calculated that between June 1 and August 17, over 28 million people joined the conversation and 2.4 million videos were shared on the social networking site alone related to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Within a matter of days, the phenomenon had gone global, with challenges witnessed in many countries other countries.

A Textbook Case

The campaign was intended to raise awareness of Amyothrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), which is otherwise known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease” – a little-known disease that causes the deterioration of nerve cells, leading to paralysis and death. “Little-known”, that is, until now. Marketing textbooks are probably now being written, or even re-written, with the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge as a case study in the successful use of cause-related social media marketing campaign, but why has it been so successful and what can we learn from it?

"Emotion, challenge and social currency"

Wharton University's Professor of Marketing, Jonah Berger, has suggested that, “[w]ith its combination of emotion, challenge and social currency, the campaign has become something of a marketing phenomenon.” Berger is an expert on social media and he has written extensively on why things go viral and the effects of word-of-mouth. Berger also described the Challenge as a form of social contagion, “[p]eople don’t want to be left out. Anytime you’re at a cocktail party and someone is talking about something, whether it’s a brand or a new band, … you don’t want to be the only person in the group who has no idea what they’re talking about.” This taps into a basic human emotion and need for belonging. Berger also believes that it succeeded because it is representing a worthy cause, so there is little that people can object to in terms of its message and call to action.

5 Social Media Marketing Lessons from the Ice Bucket Challenge

What are the five lessons that we can take from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge?

1. Timing – it came during the summer months, meaning that people had time to participate and lighter evenings enabled people to take part, whereas the nature of the challenge would have precluded participation during the cold winter months. Thus the planning and execution of the campaign was vital to ensure that the timetable allowed it to spread virally from early spring into summer.
2. Simple – there was no requirement for complicated equipment, instead it could be attempted by nothing more than someone with a bucket, some cold water, and a smartphone and friend in order to record the event for posting on social media.
3. Social – the challenge passed amongst friends and relatives in a genuinely word-of-mouth style, precisely because it was so personal. We associated with the people doing it and we also connected with their often personal reasons for doing it, both serious and frivolous. This is the 'social currency' that Berger is talking about.
4. Celebrity – the challenge has also passed amongst a number of high-profile celebrities, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, and this always helps to give a social media campaign velocity, particularly when they start spreading the challenge socially themselves, as was the case here.
5. Challenge – the Challenge tapped into the desire to have credibility in the eyes of your peers, but also the need to avoid shame, if you were not seen to take up the baton and take part when you had been nominated. People embraced the sense of challenge inherent in it.

Written by Will Trevor, Founder and Training Consultant at Windsor Training

Email: will.trevor@windsortraining.net

Picture Credit: By Rauglothgor (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons