In July of 2014, the ALS Association noticed a sharp rise in donations almost overnight. ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, had become the unwitting beneficiary of the most viral marketing campaigns in all of 2014.
To date, the association has received well over 15 million dollars in funds, mostly attributable to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
Let's look at why the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was such a hit and how your company can learn from it.
Framework for Success
In his book, "Contagious: Why Things Catch On," author Jonah Berger constructs a framework for marketing success called STEPPS.
STEPPS is an acronym for the six factors that contribute to things that wildly catch on in society. If we examine these six factors closely and relate them to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, we quickly understand why the campaign took off the way it did.
Social Currency
Your marketing campaign should have social currency; that is, a way to make people feel they are achieving a kind of status symbol by the act of sharing or having knowledge about it. Social currency can be demonstrated by insider information, or having knowledge of an upcoming trend before everybody else knows about it.
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge gave people social currency when they let others in on this innovative and fun way to raise funds for charity.
Triggers
Triggers are used in ad campaigns all the time to make us think of specific brands when we see or hear certain things.
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge had intrinsic triggers because it was associated with ice cold water during the hot summer of 2014, one of the hottest summers on record.
Emotion
People share things that create deep feelings of emotion within us. That emotion can be positive (awe, elation, power) or negative (outrage, anger, resentment), but the outcome - the urge to share our emotion - is the same.
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge intrinsically had the factor of emotion, because of the do-good, feel-good aspect of being able to help others who need it.
Public
Most people are followers. If enough other people are seen to be doing something or using something, it's not long before the 100th monkey makes it viral.
Facebook sharing played an integral part in the success of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. When people started videotaping their participation in the campaign, it caught on like wildfire. When celebrities started in on the act, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge campaign became unstoppable.
Practical Value
The world might be seen as a place full of useless items, but the most successful of these are the ones that people see as having practical value. If you can show that your product or service has credible monetary or emotional value, you have a leg to stand on as far as marketing your product.
The practical value of dumping a bucket of ice water on a friend's head may be hard to prove, but once you throw in the monetary value to a worthy charity like the ALS Foundation, it's easy to see why this act was seen as a good one.
Stories
Sharing is made all the better when there is a story behind it. Rounding out your marketing campaign with an interesting story will help people remember both the product and your company.
When people started doing the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, they told stories along with it. They described what they were wearing, who they were with, where they were, and why they did it. For most, it was an event they will never forget - because of the story that went along with it.
If your marketing campaign has even three of these factors, your odds for success will be great.
Here are 18 Reasons the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is your new standard in digital marketing.
In a day and age when promoting your brand is more important than ever, take the challenge of making your company’s marketing efforts the best.