The campaign rolled out slowly but strategically. The challenge dared folks to film themselves dumping a bucket of ice water over their heads, tag friends to do the same and donate money to ALS — all on Facebook, where mobile video was just taking off. First, close family and friends were challenged. Then it spread to adjacent communities. Then new cities. Then new countries. Then athletes and celebrities. Will Smith. Bill Gates. Oprah. Mark Zuckerberg. The original crew worked day and night to fan the flames and it soon became the biggest and most exciting social movement to ever exist.

17 million videos were created, 159 countries participated, 70 billion video views were counted and $220 million was raised. More people participated than the Super Bowl and Oscars, combined. More money was raised each day than the annual budget of the ALS Association in New York. And hope for a better future for ALS was created.

This is the ultimate case study in virality and strategic use of an emerging product - Facebook’s mobile video platform - as over 440 million people viewed the videos with no media spend whatsoever. The user-generated videos were fun and engaging, and they spread from one to many through the power of Facebook’s social graph and friend tagging feature. Likes, shares, hashtags and other trending tools also surfaced the videos and, before long, people’s feeds exploded with ALS Ice Bucket Challenge content.

In the summer of 2014, some small-town ice buckets turned into one of the biggest movements to EVER occur on the internet. What became known as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge sparked a global phenomenon, inspiring more people from around the world to shoot videos with their mobile phones than ever seen before. From every corner of the globe, people of all ages and backgrounds gave ALS the attention it deserves and together created over 17 million mobile videos and raised $220 million.

Before this movement, the ALS world had been quiet for a while - patients were nervous about speaking up and there weren’t any Oscar-winning blockbusters about it yet.

Patients Pete Frates, Pat Quinn, Anthony Senerchia and their families challenged themselves to combat this degenerative and silent disease with something light, fun and easy. And to leverage the power of socially-charged mobile videos make it spread like wildfire.