ALS Ice Bucket Challenge - Review

Bill Gates taking the ice bucket challenge

Photos: www.techtimes.com 

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Question: There are so many charities & causes out there, why did ALS Ice Bucket Challenge go viral so quickly on social media?

Here's what I think 

1) Associated groups 

Before he got ALS, Pete Frates is an baseball athlete in Boston University. See within these sentence, there are the baseball group - people who play baseball. athletes group - people who are athletes and Boston university group - people who are studying / teaching / working in Boston University. Spreading out further, association can also be made when Pete is an fellow Bostonian (not sure if that is how they call people from Boston), Pete is an American, Pete is a fellow human...okay, maybe that's a bit far. 

When people are able to associate, they are more likely to help (in this case, spread the ice bucket challenge). E.g. if you are studying in Boston University and even if you don't know Pete, you know he is from the university, there is a high chance that you will help spread the challenge in the name of a fellow 'college-mate'. 

What's more, when people from non-related groups did the challenge, e.g. celebrity, then celebrity group becomes an associated group and so on.  That's probably one of the main reason why it became viral worldwide. 

2) Fun factor

The ice bucket challenge looks fun and when fun and good cause come together, people are more willing to do it and more willing to share. 

A challenge will be anytime more interesting and intoxicating then a 'please donate' plead, so interest is generated and word is spread. "Hey, have you done the ice bucket challenge" will probably be the most discussed topic in universities, social groups, etc 

3) Nomination

The nomination of 3 people to do the ice bucket challenge plays 2 important roles. The first -  the MLM concept: 

1>3>9> 27>81>243>729>2187>6,561>19,683>59,049>177,147>531,441

In 12 times of spreading, 1 person can reach out to more than half a million of people. Of course you may argue that no everybody will accept the challenge, which I agree but even if 1 in 5 takes up the challenge. we have 1 person reaching out to over 100,000 people doing the challenge.

The 2nd role is the specificity. Its points directly at you when you are nominated by your friend, shouts at you to do it, and inevitably, you have some form of peer pressure of doing it, or at least the pressure will make you seriously consider whether should you do it or not.

4) The $$$ factor (or the lack of it)

The challenge is to pour an ice bucket over you, it doesn't compel you to donate or take the challenge if you don't wish to. And categorising people into these 4 categories:

a) People who will take the challenge and donate

b) People who will take the challenge but not donate

c) People who will not take the challenge but will donate

d) People who will not take the challenge nor donate  

Putting on a chart, it will be something like this:

Except category (d), the rest will have achieved the ALS cause's objectives of either raising funds or raising awareness. With a 'heart', most people will choose (a), (b) or (c), in which the old chinese saying: 有钱出钱， 有力出力 （People with the money donate the money, people without money can help with using energy). 

If a cause or charity ask for money upfront, excuses automatically come out cognitively like"Oh, but I am a bit tight this month", "is this for real, or should I check first before I donate" Trust me, you will never check and never donate afterwards. 

I observed that people are more willing to help out with doing things rather than coming out money, so getting people to do the challenge and raising awareness is much easier than raising money upfront from people. Of course, then there is the other group who will not want to go through coldness and 'pain' but still genuinely want to help, so these are the people who will donate money. 

Conclusion

For the past week or 2, I have been seeing videos of the ice bucket challenge from people I know and people I don't. For a good cause like this, videos going viral on social medias are definitely good and it should be supported.