Making sense of the "Ice Bucket Challenge"

The Ice Bucket Challenge is a social phenomenon that many say will change the face of marketing for non profits in significant ways. For the one or two of you that are not aware of what the challenge is, here's a brief explanation. The challenge is from one person to another to dump an ice bucket over their head, video the event and post on social media. What does dumping ice bucket over one's head do for anybody?

The purpose is to bring awareness to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). ALS "is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord." It is not very common but very aggressively destructive to the human condition. The ALS Association has been a around for 30 years to fight ALS in every way possible. Its a non-profit that provides advocacy and funding for programs of treatment and research. The need for ALS Association's services have been real and known for years, raising $15 to $20 million in recent years through normal non-profit marketing means.

In less than one month The Ice Bucket Challenge raised approx $23 million for the ALS Association. People by the millions have been motivated to video themselves dumping ice on their head and post on social media to challenge friends and colleagues to do the same. How do we explain the behavioral impact of this phenomenon so that we can transfer learning to. organizations who wish to increase economic response from the public to their products and services?

The answer is found in what we learn about making our products and services salient to those that make up our market. Too often campaigns to help people understand the need or value of the product/service is the focus of the message. Its very common for people to know that a product/service can satisfy their need without ever acting on behalf of acquiring the product/service. Knowledge and need are necessary for behavior but not sufficient. SALIENCY is what ultimately moves or motivates a person to act. Saliency is the least familiar and less understood facet of motivation, but absolutely critical is we are to be successful motivating people to behave as we wish (such as purchase our product). What can we learn from The Ice Bucket Challenge about saliency?

The Ice Bucket Challenge creates disequilibrium and then establishes legitimacy, the way to make something salient. Disequilibrium can be created in many ways. In this case its the combination of entertainment and challenge. These interrupt our status quo, producing an open mind via emotional stimulus. This is why motivational speakers, pastors, coaches, etc. use stories that make us laugh or make us cry. They create emotional disequilibrium, allowing the message to get our attention.    

The Ice Bucket Challenge uses a medium that carries legitimacy via social contagion. the fact that a friend, or otherwise respected person, challenges us gives the behavior legitimacy. I am not "weird" if I do it. In fact I may be considered "weird" if I don't. "Everybody's doing it" is the power of contagion. 

People do the challenge, thereby drawing attention to ALS, because its attention getting and its cool. Aflac did this with the duck. nothing changed about their product, but an entertaining, well presented duck changed Aflac's awareness and attraction ten fold. 

 I think the message here is that while organizations of all kinds focus mainly on the need they meet and the message of knowledge to others about how they meet the need, they too often fail to focus on and understand how to make their product/service salient. Its a difficult concept, but those that get it right have extraordinary success.

The Ice Bucket Challenge - making saliency salient!!

Certainly worth pondering .....