UNIVERSITY PARK — “I couldn’t imagine anything like this happening in the time when social media didn’t exist,” Edward Miller, a senior majoring in biochemistry, said about the now-famous ALS Ice Bucket Challenge campaign that gained worldwide attention this summer.
The ALS Association has raised more than $115 million in donations since July 29 when the challenge began. Comparatively, the association raised a total of $29.1 million during its 2013 fiscal year.
Karen Winterich, associate professor of marketing in the Smeal College of Business whose research focuses on examining the effects of cultural and moral identities on charitable giving and brand evaluations, said the challenge was a huge success.
“The clever promotional campaign not only increases awareness of the cause, but also gives consumers a call to action. Many marketing campaigns can capture attention, but far fewer can bring in money via sales or donations.”
— Karen Winterich,
associate professor of marketing
in the Smeal College of Business
“The clever promotional campaign not only increases awareness of the cause, but also gives consumers a call to action. Many marketing campaigns can capture attention, but far fewer can bring in money via sales or donations,” Winterich said. “The ALS challenge has brought a memorable campaign at a minimum, but it’s also given many individuals a chance to connect and identify with others. When participants range from celebrities and sports stars to elementary school children and their teachers, the challenge seems to have helped humanize others, bringing different groups of people together on the same level.”
Many students and faculty members from the Penn State community have participated in the challenge, including Roger Williams, Penn State Alumni Association’s executive director. Penn State football head coach James Franklin and several members of the team took the challenge, too, in honor of former Penn State linebacker Tim Shaw, who was recently diagnosed with the disease. Other Penn State coaches, including women’s soccer coach Erica Walsh and men’s hockey head coach Guy Gadowsky, have also doused themselves in ice water as part of the challenge.
Dr. Craig Hillemeier, CEO of Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, took the challenge on behalf of the Penn State Hershey ALS Clinic, which specializes in studying amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the disease behind the ice bucket challenge that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.
Social media success
Many students identify social media as a key role in the success of the campaign as most of them learned about the challenge by seeing videos posted on popular social media sites and getting nominated by friends.
“It felt pretty good because when you do the challenge, you get to nominate people as well, and it’s like a chain reaction. The awareness keeps on growing and the donations keep growing,” said Kimmie Shui, a senior majoring in hotel management. “I’m pretty sure that a majority of people do not even know what ALS is. It’s good that it is now out there.”
As an international student from Hong Kong, Shui said that the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has brought great impact not only to the United States, but also to other countries around the world. “It helps bring it to international attention instead of just national,“ she said.
Winterich agreed on the positive impact social media has brought to the success of this campaign. “Social media — and the Internet more broadly with sites such as GoFundMe — has generally had a positive impact on charitable giving,” she said. “It allows people with a cause they’re passionate about to solicit aid around the world for little cost.”
Winterich said that on the flip side, the Internet and social media drastically increase the number of charitable organizations that are requesting funding assistance, resulting in a lot of smaller donations from people giving to multiple charities. “Many consumers are willing to give small donations — $10 or $20 — to a cause, which when just asking a few friends and family may not have a large impact, but when it’s spreading on social media and viewed by millions, the end result can be phenomenal,” she said.
“Many consumers are willing to give small donations — $10 or $20 — to a cause, which when just asking a few friends and family may not have a large impact, but when it’s spreading on social media and viewed by millions, the end result can be phenomenal.”
— Karen Winterich
Winterich added that the challenge is unlikely to have negative impacts on other charities. “For a small fraction of people, donating to ALS may deter them from donating to another charity, which some may deem more worthy for than ALS for any number of reasons. However, it’s unlikely that other charities will be negatively impacted. Most of the ALS donations are relatively small, so people aren’t shifting their annual giving to ALS,” she said. “It’s the number of people donating that has resulted in such success. It’s possible that donating to ALS may increase salience of another charity with which consumers identify or hold close at heart, thereby spurring donations to other charities as well rather than deterring them.”
Winterich said that there are pros and cons to all marketing campaigns but that the majority receive negative feedback even if they are an overall success.
The ALS challenge has opened the door to new possibilities for marketing campaigns for other nonprofit organizations. Students have been inspired, too, with different ideas about how they would conduct their own challenge to raise public awareness of and funds for other community issues.
“If I were to create my own challenge, it would probably be drinking tabasco or some type of hot sauce, or eating a lemon,” Shui said. “And it would be to support an orphanage school I used to volunteer at in Cambodia.”
Staff members on campus also expressed interest in creating an awareness challenge. “I would create a challenge for a food relief organization such as Stop Hunger Now, which has previously held meal packaging events on campus,” said Joshua Pake, a campus minister fromChristian Student Fellowship. “I think the ALS challenge showed us new and creative ways to raise funds for a cause.”