ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: Using Diffusion to explain why it was so viral
In the Summer of 2014, a fresh, engaging, and irresistible trend took over the internet: the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. The challenge was to donate money and douse yourself with freezing cold water in the name of research for the disease ALS. Contestants videotaped themselves getting soaked and then passed it on to their friends, calling on them via social media to also do the challenge. The challenge spread like wildfire as bigger and bigger names began to donate and videotape themselves doing the challenge. Contestants got increasingly creative with how they went about pouring the water. Each iteration, each new contestant worked to push the challenge forward and skyrocket the donations to ALS. By August 20th, the challenge raised more than 22.9 million in donations. This begs the question: why did this trend go so viral?
To begin our analysis, we can look at the challenge from the perspective of diffusion. We can create a Nash Equilibrium model that explains the various payoffs for each decision a potential participant can make. The matrix can be broken down as such and we can solve for the threshold required (percentage of player’s friends that must nominate them) to convince a given player to do the challenge:
| Do the Challenge | Don’t do the Challenge | |
| Do the Challenge | 5,5 | 5,-5 |
| Don’t do the Challenge | -5, 5 | 0, 0 |
To justify the values: If both do the challenge it is plus 5 for each player because they look good in the public eye and they are doing good things for charity. If one chooses to not do the challenge and the other player does, the one who does gets plus 5 because they look good, but the player who does not do the challenge looks bad so they get minus 5 payoff. If both players do not do the challenge, they both get zero because since neither did it, one person does not look worse compared to the other.
Now with the matrix created, we can use a Nash Equilibrium to calculate the threshold value:
5pd – 5(1-p)d = 5pd
5pd – 5d + 5pd = 5pd
5pd = 5d
p = 1
This threshold does not make any sense and it seems a Mixed Nash Equilibrium is not achievable. Upon analysis of the matrix, we can clearly see there are some dominant strategies available. For both players, it is always a better move to join the diffusion and do the challenge. This fact elucidates why the challenge was able to spread so virally. People had nothing to lose from doing the challenge other than getting drenched in cold water. The threshold for them to join in on the trend was essentially anything greater than zero. All it took was one friend to nominate a person and then their best payoff is to do the challenge.
It seems that the virality of this challenge stems from the fact that there was nothing to lose and it was a fun way to raise awareness for a disease. If I was to try to create a challenge as successful as this one, I would have to find another easy and fun to do challenge that makes it so the adoption threshold is also any value greater than zero.
Source:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2014/08/22/7-marketing-lessons-from-the-als-ice-bucket-challenge/?sh=38535ba97586