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We’ve done it in onesies, we’ve done it with desert sand, Matt Damon’s even done it with toilet water. But phenomenally successful as the ice bucket challenge may appear, what kind of long-term behaviour change potential does it really have?
Over the last month, Facebook walls have been drenched in videos of people taking part in the ice bucket challenge. From scantily clad celebrities showering themselves in ice, to friends, family and the cookie monster doing their bucket thing, to a group of very merry Irish nuns gleefully dousing one another, it’s been a challenge for anyone using social media to miss.
But while the eye-catching stunt raises momentary awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – also known as motor neurone disease – and is reported to have raised over $100m to date, opinion is divided as to the longer-term impacts of the ice bucket challenge, just as it was over the likes of movember and #nomakeupselfie in the past. Putting aside the justified backlash spearheaded by those dismayed by a campaign centred around disposing of water in a world struggling to cope with areas of widespread drought and a lack of clean drinking water, how does the ice bucket challenge measure up?
Miriam Laverick, head of campaigning at PR agency Four Colman Getty, points out that when it comes to raising the profile of ALS and the ALS Association, this campaign has been a significant achievement. She said: “They have had way more than their 15 minutes of fame. Charities campaigning on diseases like cancer are always going to have a bigger presence in people’s lives, so to cut through into the public eye and become part of everyday conversation in this way is a big success. You could even argue that media critical of the campaign have contributed to raising awareness of a disease that people knew little about beforehand.”
It’s this awareness that Rachel Collinson, digital innovation consultant for Xtraordinary Fundraising believes is a key catalyst for long-term behaviour change. She said: “People change their behaviour when it becomes a societal norm. The ice bucket challenge is going a long way to make giving to charity part of that normal pattern of behaviour for anybody, and shaming those who don’t. Like it or not, that’s what happens.”
Niel Bowerman agrees that the ice bucket challenge was a run-away success for those raising awareness about ALS. However, the co-founder of the Centre for Effective Altruism argues that overall the campaign has the potential to do more harm than good.
“Evidence suggests that people have a total ‘donation budget’, so donating more to one place means much less to another – something my colleague Will MacAskill refers to as funding cannibalism,” he said.
“Different charities have different cost-effectiveness – for example, the ALS Association estimates that it costs on average $200,000 per year to support someone in the final stages of the disease. In comparison, the cost of an extra year of healthy life from distributing bed nets to tackle malaria is only $100. You could therefore argue that if the ALS fundraising drive has moved money from a more cost-effective charity to a less cost-effective one, this would be harmful overall.”
While Collinson is acutely wary of this method for assessing a campaign’s effectiveness, seeing it as “an incredibly narrow definition based on capitalist economics and some fundamental assumptions about what makes life worth living”, she and Bowerman agree that it is vital to ensure that a viral campaign is translated into ongoing commitment if the benefits of that campaign are to be realised. There are three pieces of advice Collinson would give the ALS Association: educate new donors about the difference their money will make; start a thank you campaign that aims to be just as viral as the original; follow that up quickly with a series of welcome messages explaining more about ALS and countering some of the rumours that have circulated about their spending.
The lesson? Being prepared and proactive matters. Kony 2012 is a memorable example of a publicity disaster that ensued when the campaign’s success span out of control without adequate resources to support it. At the time, Dan Pallotta wrote that the three founders of the campaign against the Ugandan rebel warlord, Joseph Kony, were being attacked “not by Kony, but by critics whose voices are raised louder about this video than they ever were by Kony’s atrocities”. This chimes with Laverick’s assertion that many organisations are not used to unleashing a campaign over which they have little or no control once in the public domain.
Ultimately, doing just that has paid off for the ALS Association. Now only time will tell whether they can convert their highly successful viral campaign into one that engenders positive, long-term behavioural change. Critics are dubious. And even if a proportion of their current donors do engage with the charity and its cause on a deeper level, there will always be those who argue that the money should have been directed elsewhere to start with.
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