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.
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.
