Ice Buckets and Playground Rules
By Fiona van Iersel
Minerva Empowerment
Digital Marketing
17 September 2025

For me, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was basically peer pressure. Full disclosure: yes, I did it, but only because my daughter, my niece and my cousin nominated me. It felt as though refusing would let them—and the whole community—down.

It reminded me of those ridiculous chain emails: forward this to ten people or something dreadful will happen. Not the same stakes, obviously, but you get the vibe. The pressure to keep the chain unbroken was real. Someone would ask whether I had forwarded the email, I would object to the nonsense, and eventually I would forward the damn thing. The nomination mechanic brought that feeling into public view.

Research on electronic word of mouth examines why people create, encounter and evaluate what others share (Rosario et al., 2019). My experience makes the belonging part of that question hard to ignore. I was not only deciding whether to support a cause. I was deciding how I wanted to appear to people I cared about.

Altruism or vanity? In my own case, proving I was not a spoilsport briefly pushed the charity into the background. Berger’s idea of social currency helps me think about that uncomfortable admission (Berger, 2014). Was I being an activist, or joining a global humblebrag? Probably a more muddled combination than I would like to admit.

The playground rules of virality seem to follow us into adulthood. Dare, double dare, triple dare with a cherry on top: sacred law. Decline and risk being left out. Maybe electronic word of mouth is sometimes an upgraded playground game with better cameras.

The odd, the curious and the silly catch my attention. Would a completely solemn version have drawn the same participation? Berger and Milkman (2012) connect high-arousal emotion with sharing. A freezing bucket and an awkward squeal make that question vivid, even if no single ingredient explains the whole campaign.

Then there is the platform. How much credit belongs to the idea, and how much to the tools that made participation visible and easy to pass on? Social media’s opportunities and constraints matter (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). I wonder whether the same challenge, launched into a different platform culture, would travel in the same way.

Memes or marketing? Shifman’s work on digital culture offers another way to think about imitation and participation (Shifman, 2014). Brands can create an invitation, but that does not mean they can dictate what people do with it or engineer the next lightning strike.

To me, the genius of the Ice Bucket Challenge was the blend: a worthwhile cause, entertainment and playground peer pressure. It gave people a way to do good while laughing at themselves and proving they belonged. That combination is why I still think about it—and still react to the sound of ice water hitting a bucket.

References

Berger, J. (2014). Contagious: How to build word of mouth in the digital age. Simon & Schuster.

Berger, J., & Milkman, K. L. (2012). What makes online content viral? Journal of Marketing Research, 49(2), 192–205. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.10.0353

Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003

Rosario, A. B., de Valck, K., & Sotgiu, F. (2019). Conceptualizing the electronic word‐of‐mouth process: What we know and need to know about eWOM creation, exposure, and evaluation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 47(3), 422– 448. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-019-00679-2

Shifman, L. (2014). Memes in digital culture. MIT Press.