By Steve Penhollow

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge may be the most successful viral philanthropic campaign in history.

History, in this case, only goes back to 1989. That’s the year the phrase “viral marketing” was first coined, according to an entry in the compendium The International Handbook of Advertising Research.

An essay in that tome by Petya Eckler and Shelly Rodgers called “Viral Marketing: A Conceptualization” cites a 1989 PC User article in which John Bownes of City Bank was quoted as saying, “It’s viral marketing. You get one or two in, and they spread throughout the company.” Bownes was referring in that instance to the preference for Macs over Compaq PCs at the accounting firm Ernst & Whitney — a preference and a virus that has done little but spread ever since.

Viral marketing as a concept, if not a term, certainly predates the Internet era. The rock band the Grateful Dead and the TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000 owe much of their success to their seemingly counterintuitive tendency to encourage open, unapologetic and vigorous piracy
of their works.

The practice of tying yellow ribbons around trees to show support, variously, for deployed troops and Americans held hostage in foreign lands has repeatedly proliferated without the help of Facebook and Twitter. But the Internet took viral marketing to a whole new level.

The idea that so many people from every state, from several countries, from all walks of life, from every economic circumstance, are doing this together is a pretty powerful one.

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, as it has evolved, is comprised of two choices: A person who has been challenged must either donate $100 to the ALS Foundation (devoted to research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that is commonly referred to as “Lou Gehrig’s disease”) or donate $10 and pour a bucket of ice water over his or her head. Posting a video of the pouring is an implied sub-requirement.

Countless celebrities have taken the challenge, as have fictional characters, including Kermit the Frogand Homer Simpson.

As of Tuesday Aug. 26, 2014, the challenge had raised (as reported in an ALS Foundation press release) “$88.5 million in donations compared to $2.6 million during the same time period last year (July 29 to Aug. 26). These donations have come from existing donors and 1.9 million new donors to the Association, which is incredibly grateful for this tremendous outpouring of support.”

The honest truth about viral campaigns is that no one really knows why one spreads like wildfire and another curls up like Slinky wire.

The origins of this challenge are either murky or crystal clear, depending on who is reporting on them.

The challenge is widely acknowledged to have been spearheaded by Pete Frates, a former Boston College baseball player who suffers from ALS. Frates is certainly not the first person to link cold-water immersion with fundraising, and he never claimed to be. Such a claim would seem patently absurd to anyone who has ever visited a homecoming carnival dunk tank.

This didn’t stop the website Slate from giving an Aug. 22 article the ominous link title “Who Invented the Ice Bucket Challenge? A Slate Investigation.” And it didn’t stop Slate’s executive editor, Josh Levin, from characterizing Frates-besotted stories as contributing to “the origin myth.”

In an Aug. 12 Slate editorial that links the current challenge to earlier dares made between and among pro golfers, Will Oremus wrote, “Watch the golfers’ videos, and you’ll see the stunt was really just about getting their friends to film themselves doing something dumb for no reason. The charity part was an afterthought. Altruism was also sometimes tacked on to a similar ‘cold water challenge’ that went viral earlier this year, in which people dared one another to plunge into frigid waters.”

Blaming a person or people for whatever annoys you about this challenge is akin to blaming a tornado for what it ‘decided’ to destroy and what it ‘chose’ to leave behind.

The use of the word “afterthought” and the phrases “something dumb for no reason” and “tacked on” would seem to indicate that Oremus thought he was imparting some pretty damning stuff. But was he?

In what way does the golfers’ conjectural estrangement from charitable impulses detract from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge? Doesn’t the revelation that Frates and others took a stunt and fortified it with an astoundingly robust charitable component bolster rather than undermine the assertion that they deserve credit for creating something new?

Does it really matter to anyone, including Frates, where and how the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge originated?

A number of pundits have been trying to throw cold water on the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and they haven’t had much success in cooling it down.

Some, like Time magazine’s Sarah Miller and Jorie Ella of the website Tea & Breakfast, have asserted that it makes Americans look foolish on the world stage.

“Here we are in America dumping ice water on our heads, which, I insist, is more than just harmless fun for a good cause,” Miller writes. “It is disrespectful to the literally [sic] millions of people in the world who are, as I type and you read, in actual physical pain.”

Just because the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is silly doesn’t mean it doesn’t pack an emotional punch.

“In the global village, we look like fools,” Ella writes. “And it is embarrassing. What the (expletive) is wrong with us? This country is a big immature child who refuses to expand its emotional capacity to process pain, injustice, and trauma.”

The world stage is an immense place, of course, and it includes such silly yet globally embraced American blockbusters as Guardians of the Galaxy, which — on Aug. 27 — crossed the $500 millionworldwide box-office threshold.

The world seems to depend on the United States for some silliness, even when (especially when) that silliness doesn’t have charitable aims.

Of course, the assertion that any individual who takes part in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge can’t possibly be thinking (nay, worrying … obsessing …) about any of the world’s other problems, and working to solve them, is absurd and cannot be proved (which is not to suggest that the writers who have asserted this have any interest in proving it). Pouring ice water over your head isn’t an automatic, ironclad verification of imbecility.

British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who has portrayed such mental midgets as Sherlock Holmes, Julian Assange and Khan Noonien Singh, and completed his master’s degree at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, allowed himself to be doused with ice water five times in his video.

Perhaps he is just a really good actor.

The insinuation, in these sorts of screeds, that charitable efforts shouldn’t be fun, wacky or silly probably wouldn’t be supported by the directors of any of the nation’s charities. A freelance writer would be hard-pressed to find a charitable event in his or her American municipality that did not have an element of fun, wackiness or silliness.

In a former life, I spent a quarter century as a newspaper reporter, and I recall the desperate, hardscrabble days when I attended ostensibly charitable events just so I could partake of fun, wacky, silly appetizers and free booze. I’m sure some of the authors of these negative pieces have experienced similar days.

So, what do these writers suggest that people do in lieu of dumping ice water on their heads? Just donate?

“Just donate” is a fine sentiment, but as a slogan for a viral campaign, it has all the raw, sumptuous appeal of “Just floss.” What these scribes seem to be saying is, “This whole bewildering business would be a lot better if it were just a quiet, invisible ‘campaign’ instead of an ostentatious, unavoidable ‘viral campaign.’”

The aforementioned directors of the nation’s charities, who undoubtedly at this moment are trying to devise ways to duplicate the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, might not agree.

The irony about a being a writer denouncing virality in the extremely competitive blogosphere is this: There isn’t a blogger who doesn’t hope his or her post, even when it expresses the wish that something else hadn’t gone viral, goes viral.

Blaming a person or people for whatever annoys you about this challenge is akin to blaming a tornado for what it “decided” to destroy and what it “chose” to leave behind. A viral campaign like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is not a sentient creature.

You’d have better luck editorializing against sunspots.

The honest truth about viral campaigns is that no one really knows why one spreads like wildfire and another curls up like Slinky wire.

“Scientists are only beginning to explore the psychological motivations that turn a link into ‘click bait’ and propel a piece of content to Internet fame,” wrote Natalie Kitroeff in the New York Times in May 2014.

Research at the University of Texas at Dallas indicates that people are most likely “to share any video that evoked an intense (and not necessarily negative) emotional response.”

“People share things they have strong emotional reactions to, especially strong positive reactions,” University of Texas social psychologist Dr. Guadagno said.

Just because the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is silly doesn’t mean it doesn’t pack an emotional punch. The idea that so many people from every state, from several countries, from all walks of life, from every economic circumstance, are doing this together is a pretty powerful one.

None of the pundits who have denounced this campaign seems to be able or willing to present a convincing argument for why the world would be a better place if the challenge had not occurred at all and the ALS Foundation did not have an extra $90 million (and climbing) for research into the disease.

If you are against the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, that’s the only argument worth making, it seems to me.

Steve Penhollow
Writer/Editor
BMDG

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