The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is without a doubt, one of the most popular, compelling, and successful campaigns of the social media era.
The Ice Bucket Challenge was an awareness campaign in which people would post a video of dumping a bucket of ice water over themselves and then nominating at least three friends to take the challenge. If they don’t take the challenge they are encouraged to donate to the ALS Association. These videos took over the internet in the summer of 2014 with more than 17 million uploads to Facebook. These videos were watched by 440 million users over 10 billion times.
Hundreds of public figures and celebrities took the challenge as well, with funny and unique videos.
Every year an Ice Bucket Challenge event is held every year now, to raise awareness and donations for the ALS Association.
But How Did This Get So Big?
According to the ALS Association’s webpage discussing the Ice Bucket Challenge, “It
started with a professional golfer named Chris Kennedy, who challenged his sister, Jeanette Senerchia in Pelham, New York. Jeanette’s husband Anthony has ALS. Through Facebook, one of her friends was connected to Pat Quinn in Yonkers, New York, who was connected to Pete Frates in Boston, Massachusetts. Pat and Pete are both young men battling the disease and their social networks blasted the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge out of the Northeast to places across the country and even the globe.”
From the original video by Kennedy, the intentions were very clear that this was to raise awareness for ALS specifically.
The approach to the challenge was very smart in it’s method of getting people to participate.
The challenge itself is exciting and fun, which engaged people and drew them in to participate.
Having the participant, “nominate” their friends, it encouraged people to take action and partake or donate.
The Ice Bucket Challenge is probably the best example of what we are capable of doing through social media. It captivated audiences all over, not just America but the entire world. Most importantly, millions of dollars were raised for the ALS foundation due to the success of the Ice Bucket Challenge.
Here is a great video on how the Ice Bucket Challenge was started.
#icebucketchallenge on twitter
Here is a few unique Ice Bucket Challenge videos from some people you may know of!
Hunter Malloy's Blog 