Categories: Articles

ALS #IceBucketChallenge – You Could Be Next

It was a cold morning.

Joseph Jaffe challenged me. That’s right, he did. My fellow blogger/podcaster, founder of Evolution, and author of several amazing bestselling business books (like Life After The 30-Second Spot, Join The Conversation, Flip The Funnel and Z.E.R.O.), challenged me to fill a bucket with ice water, dunk it all over myself, and then challenge three more people to do the same. The rules are simple: If you don’t accept the challenge and do it within 24 hours, you have to donate $100 to the ALS Association (or ALS Canada). Well, I did the deed this morning (video proof below).. and, in the spirit of the cause, I also donated money to ALS. I chose the following three people for the same reason: the ice water is freezing, so I put the challenge to three people who always give me the warmest feelings of joys when we get together… even though it doesn’t happen as often as I would like.

Here are the three people that I am choosing for the ALS #IceBucketChallenge:

You have 24 hours to complete this challenge or donate $100 to ALS.

There has also been a lot of online discourse about the merits of this campaign, and questioning the brand association between ALS and dunking a bucket of ice water over your head. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Mine is simple: this has gone incredibly viral and it has raised over $7 million for a worthy cause. For every time that the Ice Bucket Challenge is mentioned without aligning it to ALS, there are still many thousands of people who are talking up the link or what cause the challenge is for. From a marketing perspective, I think that everyone has done a great job by creating something different, fun, viral and time-sensitive that is raising money for something as important as ALS.

And yes, the ice cold water did knock the glasses off of my face!

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.