The Ice Bucket Challenge Turns 10: Lessons for Social Good Communicators
August 9, 2024
Do you remember what you were doing 10 years ago this summer?
Chances are you spent part of your summer of 2014 either dumping water over your head or watching videos of friends and family who were doing the same as part of the Ice Bucket Challenge.
It's hard to remember a more meaningful grassroots fundraising campaign than the Ice Bucket Challenge, which has raised $250 million to support ALS research and is again making headlines and showing up in social media feeds this summer as it celebrates its 10th anniversary.
It’s also hard to quantify the pressure many marketing and communications professionals have felt in the decade since as their executive directors or boards have asked them why they’re unable to create something equally as viral.
Yet the reality is that it’s extremely difficult — and requires more than a little bit of luck — to catch viral lightning in a bottle.
Knowing that, here’s an approach to starting a strategic discussion that can help temper expectations, flag potential risks, and create a sound approach to audience engagement that will serve your organization across all its communications channels.
You can explain that there are essentially two ways to go viral.
The first is a nightmare scenario: your organization missteps or makes a mistake and you become the center of a social- and traditional-media firestorm.
The second is to create or become a part of a social-media sensation that makes your charity the darling of the social-media world.
No leader in their right mind would wish for the first and no communicator worth their salt can truly promise to engineer the second one — no matter how good you are at your craft.
But you CAN create the conditions that mitigate the potential for the viral disaster and position your organization to get your most passionate supporters to spread the word for you online.
It all starts with your organization’s culture. Going viral is rarely just about the tactics you use in the moment. It’s the result of how you operate day-in and day-out. It’s about the culture you create and the way you interact with your supporters.
Organizations that become the center of viral nightmares often share similar traits. They are slow to react. They rely on carefully crafted statements. In some cases, they even attempt to stifle communications and shut down debates.
In these cases, the failures are likely the result of poor organizational cultures.
By contrast, those who earn big bumps through social media or word of mouth do so because they are willing to cede control. They understand that they cannot control the conversation — but they can provide tools and resources that can help frame how people are talking about their organizations.
The ALS Association didn’t come up with the idea for the Ice Bucket Challenge. It was started — and built — by people who cared deeply about a cause.
It wasn’t a clever campaign hatched in the nonprofit’s marketing department. It was a movement that was larger than any one group.
The ALS Association understood this — and its leadership resisted the urge to try to own it.
The organization became an active participant in the movement. But its message was always very clear that the Ice Bucket Challenge wasn’t about the charity. It was about finding a cure for a terrible disease.
We all know organizations that wouldn’t have acted so thoughtfully when presented with a similar gift from passionate supporters.
As a communicator, you can’t guarantee that your organization will be part of something as massive as the Ice Bucket Challenge.
But part of your role is working to help create the conditions that will help you put out the fire when something unfortunate happens and fan the flames when a good opportunity arises.
If you can cultivate a culture that makes everyone in your organization a partner in your work, good things will follow.
