Going Viral: Hitting a Cause Marketing Home Run
I’m sure everyone has seen or at least heard of the recent viral sensation – The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
The challenge, which consists of people dumping freezing cold ice water on their heads, went viral this summer in efforts to raise money and awareness for ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. For those of you who haven’t heard, this is how it works:
1. Get nominated by someone on Facebook
2. In 24 hours… Post a video of yourself pouring ice water on yourself to Facebook OR donate $100 to an ALS Charity of your choice
3. Nominate others to take the challenge
The Ice Bucket Challenge is a great example of how to leverage social and digital media to raise money and awareness for a cause or charity. The cause marketing effort has raised upward of $40M for The ALS Association, compared to $2.1M last year during the same time period (July 29 – August 21).
More and more organizations are using social media to raise awareness for specific causes due to the vast amount of people these social media sites can reach. “Chillin 4 Charity” is another cause marketing effort that has been sweeping the internet.
It originated with University of Arizona’s Women’s Basketball Coach, Niya Butts, in order to raise money for the Kay Yow Cancer Fund. Since then a variety of different universities and their teams around the country, including Boston College, Ball State, USC, TCU and University of Tennessee have been participating in this effort to raise money and awareness.
But it’s not only coaches and teams who are getting involved, The University of Central Florida’s Athletic Director, Todd Stansbury, took “Chillin 4 Charity” to a new level – watch the video here.
Cause marketing efforts like these are great ways to get entire organizations behind supporting a good cause and making a difference. The reach these social media sites such as, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, is so vast, which is why aiming marketing efforts to these sites and users is the way to go when wanting something to spread, and spread quickly!
