With this latest viral craze, we took it as an opportunity to dive into our Discovery module within the iQ media platform to find not only mentions of the ice bucket challenge within the media, but also to find out how the challenge got started, what charity originally benefited from the challenge, when ALS came into play, and the peak mentions of the challenge. To date, the ice bucket challenge has raised over $100 million dollars for the ALS Association. But that’s not the only thing that is rising. There have been recent concerns by the media and those who have donated on how the association will use its largest donation to date. They have addressed those concerns by creating a web page. Well done ALSA. Check out this presentation from iQ media to gain insight about the evolution of the ice bucket challenge.

1. The Big Data Behind the
Big Chill of the Ice Bucket Challenge

2. With this latest viral craze, we took it as
an opportunity to dive into our Discovery
module within the iQ media platform to
find not only mentions of the ice bucket
challenge within the media, but also to
find out how the challenge got started,
what charity originally benefited from the
challenge, when ALS came into play,
and the peak mentions of the challenge.
The ice bucket challenge has taken the
Internet by storm this summer. You can’t
log in to Facebook or even see a news
broadcast without mention of the
challenge or a video of a friend dumping
a bucket of water over their head. It has
gone viral. !
The Big data behind Big Chill of the Ice Bucket Challenge

3. Overall mentions of the ice bucket challenge
If we do a quick search of the term “ice bucket
challenge” around the beginning of the summer,
we receive almost 300,000 mentions. Even
though the first mentions of the ice bucket
challenge date back to June 16, the peak
occurred on August 22nd with over 30,000
mentions.
Once the weekend rolled around, they
then dropped dramatically on the 23rd,
but you can see that they picked back
up before slowly declining as the
summer winds down.
The Big data behind Big Chill of the Ice Bucket Challenge

4. When was the first mention?
If we do a quick search of the term “ice bucket challenge” around the beginning of the summer, we receive almost 300,000 mentions.
In addition to viewing overall mentions within our Discovery module, you can also drill
down on a specific data point to find mentions on a particular day. We took a look at some
of the first mentions to see if we could determine when this challenge started going viral.
During coverage of the Quicken Loans National tournament, a correspondent in the studio
asked the announcer covering the event if he would rather do the ice bucket challenge or
twerk like Michelle Wie after her US Open win.
Click here to watch the clip.
According to our data, the first televised mention of the
ice bucket challenge occurred on June 25th on the Golf
Channel. A couple days prior to the mention, golfer
Rickie Fowler challenged Keegan Bradley to the ice
bucket challenge, and the golf world started talking.
The Big data behind Big Chill of the Ice Bucket Challenge

5. Momentum begins to grow…
Shortly after the Golf Channel mention came the
announcement that Matt Lauer had accepted his
challenge from Greg Norman. From there, the mentions
grew from just 2 on July 13th to 370 on July 14th.
Number of mentions on the day Lauer
took the challenge? 393 mentions.
The Big data behind Big Chill of the Ice Bucket Challenge

6. …and grow and grow
What’s interesting is that the day after Matt Lauer took
his challenge, the mentions dropped down to 6. On July
17th, however, the number jumped back up to 383
thanks to Martha Stewart accepting Lauer’s nomination
and completing the challenge.
Number of mentions on the day Lauer
took the challenge? 393 mentions.
The Big data behind Big Chill of the Ice Bucket Challenge

7. Which charity came first?
From July 18th to August 5th, chatter slows to 71 mentions. Much of this discussion on
online news and broadcast TV reports centered around how much the challenge has
benefited ALS or other charities. So this got us thinking, which charity came first? A great
feature of the Discovery tool is the option to search for words within words. For example,
let’s say an online news article or TV broadcast doesn’t mention “ice bucket challenge” as
one phrase all together, but maybe says something like, “Bob took the challenge by
dumping a bucket of ice on his head.”
We took this example and then searched two different phrases,
“ice bucket cancer”~20 and “ice bucket ALS”~20. When we
searched ice bucket with cancer, the first mention was on June
24th when University of Texas- Pan American (UTPA) women’s
basketball head coach Larry Tidwell accepted challenges from
Texas A&M head coach Gary Blair and West Virginia University
head coach Mike Carey to participate in the #Chillin4Charity cold
water challenge to raise money for the Kay Yow Cancer Fund.
The Big data behind Big Chill of the Ice Bucket Challenge

8. Which charity came first?
From July 18th to August 5th, chatter slows to 71 mentions. Much of this discussion on
online news and broadcast TV reports centered around how much the challenge has
benefited ALS or other charities. So this got us thinking, which charity came first? A great
feature of the Discovery tool is the option to search for words within words. For example,
let’s say an online news article or TV broadcast doesn’t mention “ice bucket challenge” as
one phrase all together, but maybe says something like…
“Bob took the challenge
by dumping a bucket of
ice on his head.”
The Big data behind Big Chill of the Ice Bucket Challenge

9. When did the challenge start benefiting ALS?
When we searched “ice bucket ALS” within 20 words, the
first mention didn’t occur until July 24th. A family in
Pelham, NY was featured on a local CBS affiliate out of
Los Angeles during their trending segment. They started
dumping buckets of ice water on their head to benefit
ALS since the father of their family had been diagnosed
with the disease. Check out the clip here.
View Video Clip
The Big data behind Big Chill of the Ice Bucket Challenge

10. When did the challenge start benefiting ALS?
After this mention is when the ALS ice bucket mentions really
took off. The next large group of mentions occurred on August
2nd when Patrick Quinn was inspired by the family in Pelham,
NY and recruited 50 friends to do the ice bucket challenge.
Local media caught on, and soon it was going viral. The next
jump of mentions occurred August 7th with 558 when Boston
nominated other major cities to take the challenge.
August 11th had over 1,200 mentions, then
jumped to over 2,600 on the 12th, and has
been in an upward trend ever since.
The Big data behind Big Chill of the Ice Bucket Challenge

11. The Big Data Behind the
Big Chill of the Ice Bucket Challenge
To date, the ice bucket challenge has
raised over $100 million dollars for the ALS
Association. But that’s not the only thing
that is rising. There have been recent
concerns by the media and those who have
donated on how the association will use its
largest donation to date. They have
addressed those concerns by creating a
web page. Well done ALSA.

12. It is amazing to have access to tons of data and to be able
to perform in depth data analysis on the fly, especially
surrounding social and media trends such as the ice bucket
challenge. There are many more ways you too can use the
Discovery tool in your daily content marketing efforts. To
take a look at Discovery and the rest of our platform,
contact us on our website at www.iqmediacorp.com.
The Big data behind Big Chill of the Ice Bucket Challenge

13. Take a demo of our Discovery tool today
Reach us at
info@iqmediacorp.com
www.iqmediacorp.com
Designed By: Digital Pomegranate