How a viral video captured the world: starring Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Michael Dell, Marissa Mayer and others

Flash mob ALS Ice Bucket Challenge captured the whole world in a matter of days and earned the title of pr-action of the year. Flashmob conditions: if you are challenged, you should pour yourself with ice water from a bucket, and videotape the process, and at the end pass the baton to several friends. If you have completed the task, the amount of donations for research on the disease of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) for you is $ 10, if you have not decided - $ 100. Today, the world IT-industry stars such as Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Michael Dell, Marissa Mayer and many others have already taken part in it. We want to share Aaron Friedman’s thoughts on why this particular campaign captured the world, actually becoming the No. 1 virus. The article is written in the first person. We have added several videos of Russian participants of the flashmob to the opinion of an expert on marketing and SEO. Enjoy!

It all happened too fast. I received a call from my friend and, honestly, had no idea what was going on at all. When I woke up in the morning, I thought, “Damn, do I really have to do this ?!”

I would like to know that this will be the biggest Internet sensation of the year (and still is) !.
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How it all began

The concept itself has little or no obvious connection with ALS disease, some media claim that this tradition was born in golf clubs, they say, there players challenge each other by pouring ice on a bucket over ice water.

Now this tradition is associated with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease), it gained immense popularity in early August. Obviously, it began as a result of the joint efforts of former baseball player Pete Freits, who was found with ALS last year, and Pete Quinn from Yonkers, New York, who fell ill in May.

The original #IceBucketChallenge video was published on the Freits Foundation page, thanks to which people can learn more about ALS, as well as on the Facebook page, which he called Team Frate Train.

Meanwhile, in New York, Pete Quinn raised money for his own treatment using the #QuinnForTheWin hashtag, along with funding for ALS research. He even managed to attract several local news channels.

As a result, this video began to spread at a tremendous rate - many people living in the northeast, and especially in Boston, where the Freits live, began to throw such “challenges” to each other.





The action was not limited to the northeastern part of the States or even all of the United States. According to reports on Facebook, the highest rankings are based on videos from other English-speaking countries: Australia, New Zealand and Canada. If you look at social networks, it becomes clear that this action has reached almost all countries of the world (in the UK, ALS is known as a rapidly progressive motor neuron disease or motor neurone disease).

Viral Charity Information

The graphs speak for themselves - Facebook shared data on Monday, according to which:

• 28+ million users discuss this tradition;
• about 2.4 million videos of people to whom the very “challenge” has been published;
• hundreds of celebrities and stars joined the flash mob.

Check out the incredible popularity of this trend in Google:



As of August 19, 2013, the ALS challenge was still one of the most relevant topics in Google.



Screenshot taken from Google Trends 8/20/2014

Interestingly, Yahoo News does not consider IceBucketChallenge one of the trend topics.


Source: Yahoo 8/19/2014

And according to Twitter, this topic is still in trend:



Instant response The ALS Association

Despite the fact that the creators of the meme initially did not focus on the ALS association, this organization quickly ignited interest (or, more correctly, melted the ice?) To the campaign, linking it with itself.

The organization first announced the existence of this phenomenon at the end of July, when it retweeted the following record, which appeared in the midst of discussions by a group of other attempts to raise funds for charity. The tweet says: “People on Facebook pour ice buckets of water over their heads to overcome ALS, one bucket for one approach.”



Representatives of the association did not take long to realize that this crazy phenomenon could be a sensation. From that moment, the organization began to tweak its Twitter action, joining many discussions on this topic, and a separate section was created on the organization’s website, which regularly published information about the success of the campaign.





“Experience the IceBucketChallenge phenomenon that has spread information about UAS over all social networks. Challenge your friends and family today! ”Reads the message on the organization’s website.

Financial success

We, as marketers, know that viral distribution is, of course, important, but the main goal is still the achievement of financial results. In fact, the campaign caused a lot of criticism: some people expressed that pouring icy water on it did not help the people who had this disease to fight ALS.

But critics almost immediately fell silent when on August 19, the ALS Association published data that since the beginning of #IceBucketChallenge donations worth $ 22.9 million dollars have been collected. This is a noticeable progress, because last year only $ 1.9 million was collected during the same period. And already on August 24, only 5 days later, the amount reached $ 70.2 million !

Involving IT industry

Among the many stars of the global IT industry who poured a bucket of ice water, as well as donated funds, we can single out the most famous people in the industry - Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Michael Dell, Marissa Meyer .

Mark Zuckerberg video



Bill Gates Video



The founders of Google, Larry and Sergey, also did not stand aside. However, they slightly broke the rules without challenging their friends, but promised that they would do it soon.



Marissa Mayer Video



Even popular SEO and IT companies challenge each other, including Mayer Reich, CEO RankAbove, who challenged the CEOs of rival SEO companies - Conductor, SearchMetrics and Brightedge (so where are your videos, gentlemen?).

Secrets of success

Of course, any marketer is interested in what caused such a resounding success. Why among the many campaigns is this one that has become so widespread? It seems to me that the matter is as follows:

1. Influential Persons. The campaign was started by Pete Freits, a fairly well-known figure in the sport, who by that time was already involved in raising money for ALS and did not hide his diagnosis.

2. Geography. Both Freits and Pete Quinn live in the northeastern United States in fairly large populated areas. Of course, people are more inclined to support those who are close by, and the east coast of the States is rather densely populated.

3. Availability of multimedia content creation tools . Now every ordinary user can easily make a video of his own, even just using a smartphone. This, in turn, contributes to the very rapid spread of the campaign.

4. Conflict-free. Many viral campaigns (or those that are only trying to get widespread) contain an element of controversy, perhaps political or economic. This campaign does not incite any discord.

5. Time limit. Those who were challenged must complete the task in 24 hours, which does not allow postponing the creation of the video until later and forget about it.

6. Excellent solely summer fun. I wonder if this campaign would have gone so far if it hadn't started on hot summer days? Dousing with ice water would hardly be so popular, for example, in February (although its distribution to Australia and New Zealand suggests otherwise). Plus - it is a lot of fun - watching adult uncles and aunts pour water from head to toe on their heads, it's not for nothing that dousing is so popular at fairs.

And finally, the challenge itself

No one is still tired of seeing virus calls in the news. At some point, everyone in the world will accept the challenge, it is only a matter of time.
So, I continue to spread the virus and challenge several people working in our field who have not yet participated in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: Matt Cutts, Barry Schwartz, Duane Forester, John Henshaw and Rand Fishkin. Guys, you have 24 hours! Good luck!

Russia did not stand aside.

The story would have remained incomplete, if not to say that the virus has come to us, to Russia. Among the well-known Russians, the co-owner of the Mail.Ru Group and the founder of the DST Global fund Yury Milner and his wife Julia took part in the flash mob.



Domestic stars of IT-industry can not fail to bring Russianness in the action. For example, the creator of the QIP messenger Sergey Kravtsov poured a bucket of ice water, after pouring a bottle of whiskey into it.



And the owner of LiveInternet, German Klimenko, went a different way: he changed the concept of a flash mob - instead of dousing with cold water, he decided to “throw a real Russian challenge”, which was that his friends had to drink a glass of vodka without a snack.





But not all influential people are so inspired by the idea of ​​douche. For example, Igor Matsanyuk, the founder of the IMI investment fund, as well as the founder and former president of the Russian IT holding Astrum Online Entertainment, refused to undergo water procedures.



Flashmob continues, the amount of donations is growing. Who knows, maybe it will last until winter?