In this blog post, we take a look at the social impact of the Ice Bucket Challenge, the image marketing of the celebrities involved, and the sincerity of their donations.
The rules of the Ice Bucket Challenge, which spread rapidly around the world in the summer of 2014, are very simple. Participants pour a bucket of ice water over their heads, nominate three people to take the challenge next, and then either pour ice water over themselves within 24 hours or donate $100 to the ALS Association. To date, numerous celebrities have participated in this challenge, including US President Barack Obama, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Apple’s Tim Cook. In South Korea, the challenge began in August 2014 with a singer, and in about two months, approximately 6,000 people from all walks of life participated. The ALS Association announced that approximately $100 million was donated through the Ice Bucket Challenge during the month of August 2014, and it is known that hundreds of millions of won were donated to the ALS Association of Korea.
The reason why the Ice Bucket Challenge spread so quickly and received such a positive response from so many people can be attributed to the event effect created by the voluntary participation of celebrities, but when we consider that it spread rapidly and caused a huge reaction that cannot be compared to other forms of charity activities led by celebrities, we can say that the Ice Bucket Challenge has something unique about it. First, from the perspective of celebrities, the Ice Bucket Challenge has the unique advantage of instantly improving their image and generating marketing effects.
Participants in the challenge may have accepted the challenge with the pure intention of sharing the suffering of ALS patients and helping them, but behind this, there is also the desire to utilize the challenge to promote themselves. While participants may have accepted the challenge with the pure intention of sharing the pain of ALS patients and helping them, it can also be seen that behind this lies a desire to actively promote themselves to the world. Bill Gates designed his own ice bucket device to show off his knowledge of physics, while also making sure to showcase Microsoft’s new tablet PC. Politicians, who are desperate to promote themselves, used the challenge to gain publicity while showing “camaraderie” by nominating their fellow politicians as the next challengers. Celebrities and athletes showed off their muscular physiques and toned bodies while participating in the challenge. Samsung poured ice water on its smartphones in an advertisement, then nominated a competitor’s product as the next participant, touting the superior waterproofing of its own product.
On the other hand, even though the public recognized that the Ice Bucket Challenge was increasingly being used to promote certain individuals and products, they continued to show interest and support for the challenge. People criticize politicians for their insincere propaganda tactics of visiting traditional markets to buy tteokbokki and sundae during election season, but they are fooled once again by their “down-to-earth” appearance and cast their votes for them. Even if a CEO who dances and sings is tone-deaf, his subordinates enjoy seeing their boss “lose face.” When a professor who appears to be serious makes a lame joke in class, students feel closer to him and enjoy the class. Similarly, when a person of authority is made to look foolish, people feel a sense of satisfaction and a sense of solidarity with that person, as if the wall between them has been broken down, and they turn a blind eye to that person’s publicity and pursuit of profit.
Lou Gehrig’s disease is a rare and incurable disease that causes progressive muscle weakness and nerve damage, eventually leading to death. While Lou Gehrig’s disease patients live in extreme pain and despair every day, pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest large sums of money in developing new drugs because they believe that even if a cure for ALS, which affects only a small number of people, is developed, it will not generate significant profits. The reality is that governments and international organizations have not come up with any effective measures and are turning a blind eye to patients with intractable diseases. In this situation, where the suffering of ALS patients is neglected due to the lack of realistic measures, if the so-called “brilliant idea” that came out after much deliberation is the Ice Bucket Challenge, we can no longer just enjoy watching celebrities pour ice water on themselves. There are many marginalized people who need our attention and help, including not only patients with intractable diseases who are dying due to institutional inadequacies, but also poor and lonely elderly people living alone, African children who are starving without even water to drink, and boys and girls who have to take care of their younger siblings while other children are receiving their parents’ love. The $100 million raised by the Ice Bucket Challenge over several months is said to be far from the $1 billion needed to develop a new drug for Lou Gehrig’s disease. Wouldn’t it be right to pour ice water over ourselves and the whole world every moment to awaken our interest and love for others?
