What goes wrong when campaigns go right? – The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

This week, I’m focusing on a success story: The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. 

 David Beckham takes an ice bath for ALS

As PR practitioners and marketers, what can we learn from it, and what do we discover about the pitfalls of success? In short, what goes wrong when campaigns go right?

This campaign has captured the hearts, minds, involvement and most importantly the pockets of countless people worldwide, with a simple viral stunt-based campaign. You’d probably need to be unconscious for the last month or more not to notice it, and it’s likely that everybody knows someone who has tipped a pail of iced water on their head and posted a video of it on the Internet, for charity.

Without a doubt, it has been an extraordinary success. As the end of August approaches, it is estimated that the campaign has raised in excess of US$88.5m in the USA alone, and much more besides elsewhere. Australians have raised $700,000 since the challenge went viral in July, according to Australia’s Channel 7 News, and on the other side of the world, British participants have raised in the region of £700,000 sterling. The funds continue to rise. 

Glitterati from the worlds of entertainment, sport, fashion, business and even politics have spontaneously got involved and filmed themselves being doused in freezing water. The public has loved seeing the likes of Leonardo Di Caprio, Gwyneth Paltrow, David Beckham, Jose Mourinho, Kate Moss, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and George W Bush in uncharacteristically undignified videos of themselves getting soaking wet. Even the cast of the new Star Wars movie are getting involved. Just like the general public, they have been carried along on the wave of the Ice Bucket challenge. Celebrity endorsement on this scale would normally cost millions of dollars.

In terms of awareness, according to The New York Times, people shared more than 1.2 million videos on Facebook between June 1 and August 13 and mentioned the phenomenon more than 2.2 million times on Twitter between July 29 and August 17. With this level of public involvement, and donations rocketing, inevitably awareness of ALS has risen enormously. Hats off to The ALS Association. It has done a grand job.

Quite a lot has already been written about why the campaign has been such a success, so I won’t dwell on it, beyond noting that it is simple, fun, easy to participate in, has a strong call to action, and involves personal invitation and interaction, a perfect combination for viral success. Nevertheless success doesn’t come without its challenges, and it’s these that present some other interesting lessons that we can learn from The ALS Association’s campaign.

Firstly, it could be considered a bit unclear what the campaign was saying. From a personal perspective, I had to look up what ALS is, and learned that it stood for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Despite the many videos of wet friends and celebrities I have seen, none of their videos explained that. In fairness, I wouldn’t have looked at all if it weren’t for the campaign, so arguably it did its job. However, it demonstrates what happens when a campaign is so successful that its reach outstrips its original aims.

ALS is the North American name for the neurodegenerative disease, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, but in countries like the UK and Australia, it’s known as Motor Neurone disease. The fact that the campaign highlights ALS suggests that it was targeted towards North America. In that territory the message was clearest. In territories where the condition has another name, education about the condition may escape some people’s notice. I assume that this is therefore a case of a domestically targeted campaign that has gone international, more by accident than by design.

What we learn from this is that in this world of globally available information, it is very easy for marketing, advertising and public relations campaigns to cross national boundaries. Crossing these boundaries can often involve crossing cultural and linguistic lines, where knowledge that can be assumed in one territory cannot be assumed in another. Furthermore, what is acceptable in terms of messages and imagery in one territory may be considered culturally unacceptable in others. In my career, I have learned that what is considered fun, eye-catching and attention-grabbing in Western Europe or North America, may be considered risqué or even offensive to audiences in India, or in religious Muslim countries, for example. It’s therefore important to factor in when a campaign might go viral, extend beyond its intended boundaries, and whether it could confuse, upset or alienate different populations.

Secondly, the campaign has been co-opted, often unofficially, by individuals seeking to raise awareness for other issues or charitable causes. In the UK, there have been many cases of people doing the ice bucket challenge for other great causes such as cancer research. In the US, movie star Matt Damon’s widely publicised ice bucket challenge involved him using toilet water, and was an opportunity for him to raise awareness about lack of availability of clean drinking water and sanitation in developing parts of the world. 

Elsewhere, the challenge has got political. Palestinian journalist Ayman al-Aloui has initiated the “rubble bucket challenge”, a variant of the ALS campaign involving pouring buckets of rubble on one’s head. As Al Arabiya news reports, al-Aloui says he is doing this as an act of solidarity with the people of Gaza.

On the one hand, this trend highlights just how effective and powerful the ALS Association campaign has been. On the other, it demonstrates how a hugely popular initiative can be used for messages other than its original aims. Arguably, through no fault of its own, in fact precisely owing to its success, the ALS Association has lost some control of its campaign’s message. Perhaps this is a price you pay for success, but it’s something that is worth considering when campaigns are being dreamed up.

Furthermore, the more popular and visible a campaign becomes, the more obvious a target it becomes for criticism, however well intentioned it is meant to be. Some commentators have complained that the challenge itself has no logical connection to the cause it is publicizing. I think that this criticism is rather sour-faced and lacking a sense of humour. There’s no harm in raising funds and awareness about a serious condition in a fun and light-hearted way.

More serious are the religious objections that have been raised. As The Independent in the UK has reported, leaders of the Catholic Church in America have voiced their objections because the money raised by those taking the challenge could be used for embryonic stem cell research, which the Church considers immoral.

Similarly, campaigners for animal rights have raised their concerns about the possibility that donations may go towards experiments involving animal testing. Leading the celebrity charge for this point of view is Pamela Anderson, and off the back of the ALS Association’s highly visible campaign, this cause / criticism is also enjoying some high profile media coverage.

Once again, the ALS Association is a victim of its own success. Criticism would have been far less forthcoming if its campaign hadn’t enjoyed such widespread coverage and participation. Again, arguably, this kind of thing is an inevitable by-product of success.

Overall, the lesson learned is that the stronger the campaign, the more conscious we must be about ways it could be misconstrued or undermined, as it becomes a bigger target.  Issues management becomes an essential part of even the best and most well-meaning campaigns. It’s no surprise that some of the most successful organizations and brands in the world expend considerable resources on issues management, despite having some of the most successful marketing, advertising and public relations.