There may never be another Ice Bucket Challenge (and that’s ok)

Pete Frates didn’t make the big lists of 2019’s most notable passings, even though he influenced millions and helped to advance medical science. Frates, who died on December 9 at the age of 34, was the Boston College athlete whose struggle with A.L.S. inspired the viral social media sensation known as the Ice Bucket Challenge.

In the summer of 2014, videos of people dumping buckets of ice water on their heads took over social media. On Facebook alone, more than 440 million people racked up a staggering 10 billion views. By the time the fervor subsided, more than $115 million had been raised for the A.L.S. Association. A year later, the Association announced that the infusion of funds had helped researchers make a breakthrough that could lead to new treatments for the disease. 

Not everyone was a fan. Critics pointed out that while the Challenge raised money for a charitable cause, the videos only focused on the donor’s participation in the trend -- a motivation that increased significantly once celebrity Ice Bucket Challenge videos began to proliferate. Decried as “slacktivism,” the stunt did little to raise actual awareness about A.L.S.

Still, the question of whether the Ice Bucket Challenge could be replicated intrigued the social sector. Some causes did try to piggyback, adding their own twists, but trend fatigue took over and none met with equal success. The A.L.S. Association also considered making the Challenge an annual event but abandoned the idea. James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research, explained why the Ice Bucket Challenge would be hard to beat: “Once an idea infects us, we build up antibodies to resist similar ideas again.”

Another factor: in the five years since the Ice Bucket Challenge, the sheer volume of online content and changes in social media algorithms have made it more difficult to rapidly build this kind of mass attention. Today, even the most successful YouTuber reaches a fraction of the total Ice Bucket Challenge audience. Seth Godin summed up the limits of stuntvertising: “It's pretty easy to get attention by running down the street naked (until everyone else does it). But that's not going to accomplish your goals.” We’ve learned that the attention means little if you don’t make a connection. Online marketing has shifted from scale to engagement.

Storytelling is now the favored strategy for building connection, leveraging our biological attachment to narrative. But not all stories are created equal. As master storytelling teacher Bernadette Jiwa explains, “In business circles, we’re often more concerned with the mechanics of storytelling than the reasons we need a story to tell.” Engagement and action -- especially the intangible action of donating -- are triggered by empathy. That requires that we center the story on the beneficiary, not the donor, as the motivator. Union Theological Seminary President Serene Jones puts it this way: “We can tell our stories till the day is done, and then wake up tomorrow and tell more of them. That’s not a challenge for us. The challenge is using our stories to explore the question, ‘So what?’”

If the passing of the Ice Bucket Challenge era means we are telling more and better stories, that can only be a good thing for purpose-driven marketing. And the Internet may meet us there, rewarding immersion, engagement, and connection over scale.