The ALS ice bucket challenge.

 

From Bill Gates, Zuckerberg and everyone's favourite Donald Trump is seems nobody was immune to the craze. 

 

Twenty fourteen was the year when the ALS PR success took off. The event was centred around pouring an ice cold bucket of water onto your head, the challenge. Post challenge you could name 3 other who HAD to do the same, and if you felt really nice donated some money to fight sclerosis disease, the actual goal of the campaign. 

 

The audience was everybody and over the course of the campaign ALS raised over $115 million US dollars, 84 of which were dedicated to research (ALS Association 2019). The campaign was able to draw in everyone, desperate to join the craze and be part of the event. Many politicians and celebrities also took part, many to simply show how benevolent they were.

 

The brilliance of the campaign was the lack of advertising required. The caveat of punishing 3 of your friends after you suffered the challenge meant that those taking part skyrocketed to 17 million worldwide (Amanda Trejos 2017). Similar to a pyramid scheme the amount of people who took the challenge tripled each time. Despite the global success is seemed the challenge didn’t actually raise that much money, in proportion. The name ALS is now well known but for all those who did take part, very few donated.

 

What makes PR campaign especially potent is their simplicity in relating to their audience. For the old spice campaign is not overall complicated, one take humour kept the audience completely entranced. For the ice bucket challenge, the simple high school like dare was easy to do, relatable and able to get anyone involved. 

 

Though the challenge has now petered out, the ALS certainly won't. 

ADL ice bucket challanede. Talk about the PR campaign.