THE ALS ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE If you go to the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History in Washington DC you’ll find a very ordinary bucket. Why on earth is a bucket there? Well, it set off one of the most powerful viral marketing campaigns of the digital age. In August 2014, celebrities, business moguls and millions of others voluntarily dumped a bucket of freezing cold water over their heads, donating to the little-known Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) cause for the privilege. (Or, like US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron, they had stumped up a larger amount to avoid their icy fate). The challenge’s sudden popularity caught the ALS Association unaware; nobody internally had initiated the idea and the first sign of something unusual was at first a trickle, then a waterfall of new donations.