Before the Summer of 2014, many people across the United States did not know what ALS was, who it affects, or how to help the search for a cure. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in both the brain and spinal cord. According to the ALS Association, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost when motor neurons die. Thus, voluntary muscle action is affected overtime and can leave patients completely paralyzed in the later stages of the disease. Sporadic, the most common form of the disease, makes up 90 to 95 percent of all patients and cases, and can affect anyone. Familial, on the other hand, only makes up about 5 to 10 percent of cases and is hereditary. The ALS Association also reports that there are more than 20,000 Americans who have the disease, with ages ranging anywhere from 40 to 70 years old (About Us, n.d.).
The Association is responsible for providing over $67 million for funding research studies across the world to find effective treatments and cures for ALS. Additionally, many of those recent studies have brought new knowledge about the internal makeup of the disease. Since its establishment in 1985, the ALS Association is the only non-profit organization in the US that combats Lou Gehrig’s Disease entirely. As stated on the Association’s official website, their mission is “to lead the fight to treat and cure ALS through global research and nationwide advocacy, while empowering people with Lou Gehrig’s Disease and their families to live fuller lives by providing them with compassionate care and support” (About Us, n.d.).
In August 2014, the viral phenomenon known as the “Ice Bucket Challenge” swept the United States, soon catching the rest of the world’s attention as well. During its first week alone, the challenge brought in more than $2.3 million, with $1 million coming from a single weekend. To illustrate just how much of a difference this campaign made in such a short time, donations from the previous summer during this time barely reached $25,000 (Flores 2014). The Ice Bucket Challenge was started by the ALS Association as a ploy to bring in more donations for research and to increase overall public awareness of the disease. The rules were simple: pour a bucket of ice water on yourself, film it, and post it within 24 hours of being challenged with the tag #IceBucketChallenge. If participants failed to do this, or just didn’t want to cover themselves in ice water, then they would have to donate $100 toward ALS research. The trend skyrocketed after being created. Facebook data scientists that analyzed data from June to August found that over 28 million people joined the campaign through tags, posts, and comments; Facebook had 2.4 million video shares during that time period on that platform alone (Perez, 2014). Media analyst Jeremiah Owyang also found that YouTube was responsible for nearly 2,300,000 million videos regarding the campaign that summer (Perez, 2014).
There are many contributing factors that were vital to the success of this campaign. For starters, without high profile celebrities, athletes, and other icons supporting the cause, its probable that the original tag would not have started a trend so quickly. In order for a campaign like this to take off, it is extremely important for it to be clever and likable by the public. Millions of Americans — near 30 million at its peak — took part in this campaign. The idea of the Ice Bucket Challenge took off almost like a competition. Friends challenged friends, celebrities and athletes would challenge others and form massive groups, and cities would even challenge other cities. Some of the most watched videos included Bill Gates, Justin Timberlake, and Jimmy Fallon with The Roots, Horatio Sanz, Steve Higgins, and Rob Riggle. The Association did an extremely good job in tailoring this campaign to a fresh, young audience that they do not usually target. Celebrities and athletes worked as interpersonal influencers to the exact audience being targeted. As defined in the text, interpersonal influencers are “leaders who are in a position to personally influence focal individuals” (Rice & Atkins, 2013, p. 6). Through celebrities millions of followers, the Association was able to reach a massive audience that would mimic celebrity action and create their own videos with the hashtag. Additionally, their message was efficiently taken by the public when they utilized social media to its fullest extent. The campaign successfully used YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to bring online traffic to the ALS Association’s official website for donations and additional information about ALS.
For this campaign, the Association utilized a multitude of theories that could be applied, including theory of reasoned action and planned behavior, self-efficacy, and message framing and agenda setting. The theory of reasoned action and theory planned behavior are defined as “a formulation and combination of personal attitudes, perceived norms of influential others, and motivation to comply as predictors of intended behavior” (Rice & Atkins, 2013, p. 5). With these theories, the Association was able to _____.
Self-efficacy is defined as “a key construct that highlights the role of the individual’s perceived capability of successfully performing behaviors. Those who are confident in carrying out recommended actions are more likely to attempt and sustain behavioral enactment efforts” (Rice & Atkins, 2013, p. 5). Through this theory, the Association was able to show the public that they needed to participate in the Ice Bucket Challenge. It worked almost like a domino effect. First, celebrities advocated for the cause and showed their support through their social media accounts. Then, the regular public felt they could also behave the same way, thus posting their videos on their own social media as well. Self-efficacy can be applied here because the target audience were confident they could do the Ice Bucket Challenge. Additionally, and according to the theory, everyone who did so would then be more likely to continue to support the cause even after the campaign ended. Furthermore, this tactic could also be successful in changing the public’s attitude and behavior towards ALS in the future.
Message framing and agenda setting were also extremely important to the success of this campaign. Rice and Atkins define message framing as “focusing on how message appeals are packaged in terms of gain-frame promotion of positive behavior versus loss-frame prevention of negative behavior, especially for audiences likely to display reluctance” (p. 5). Agenda setting, on the other hand, is designed to “convince [the audience] that they ought to be paying attention to an issue altogether” (Rice & Atkins, 2014, p. 38). Together, these theories would ensure that the target audience for the Ice Bucket Challenge would both pay attention to a new issue and also understand it the way the Association wanted them to. As previously stated, the overarching goal of the Ice Bucket Challenge was to bring more attention and awareness to the target audience and bring in more donations. Through agenda setting, the target audience responded in the exact way the Association would have wanted. Both the awareness of ALS and monetary donations increased a considerable amount in the weeks the campaign was viral. According the ALS Association’s official website, the campaign raised more than $220 million (Impact of the IBC, n.d.). In a study reported by Hashem and Behrad Koohy (2014), daily tweets including #IBC and #ALS were compared from August 2nd to September 1st. With #MS (Multiple Sclerosis) acting as a control, it was found that “when millions of people were tweeting about IBC, hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis were tweeting about ALS” (B. & H. Koohy, 2014). To further show how much of an impact social media makes in this kind of public awareness campaign, MS — a disease more commonly known by the public — was tweeted considerably less than the other two tags.
Simply put, the Association brought to light the seriousness of ALS, but with a fun, unique, and clever twist that immediately caught the attention of their target audience. As further reported by the Koohy’s, this campaign was extremely innovative because of its use of social networks to promote and educate the people about scientific findings (B. & H. Koohy, 2014).