Klick is hoping to revive interest in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge – the fundraising sensation that went viral in 2014 – with a new twist.
The Toronto-based marketing and technology agency is launching #WhatsInYourBucket, in which, instead of being dumped with ice water, Klick employees will get dumped in everything from iced coffee, cold beer and beach sand to baby powder and glitter.
Twenty employees will be filmed Thursday outside the company’s Bloor St. E. offices while they’re dunked by buckets containing the fill of their choice. They’ll ask family, friends and colleagues: “What’s in your bucket?”
One challenge will be posted on social media each business day in August as part of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge’s official slogan “Every August Until a Cure.”
“We’re hoping that it catches on and helps revive interest in the challenge,” says Sheryl Steinberg, vice-president, communications at Klick.
In 2014, the Ice Bucket Challenge became a global sensation and raised US $220 million for ALS research. Canadians donated $17 million.
According to the ALS Association, the money raised has paid off with a research breakthrough for the terminal neurological disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). It funded the largest study of inherited ALS ever and has identified a new gene, dubbed NEK1.
Last year the Ice Bucket Challenge collected only US $1 million – though that amount was significantly higher than in the years prior to the challenge. A survey by health analysts Treato found only 14% of donors from 2014 donated again in 2015.
In 2014, “it was the thing to do,” Steinberg says. She notes the challenge allowed people to be creative in their fundraising, with many coming up with different way to throw buckets of ice water over their heads. “With ‘What’s in Your Bucket,’ we’re also allowing people to be creative and have fun and make it their own.”
Klick has a relationship with Ice Bucket Challenge co-founder Pat Quinn, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2013 at age 30.
Quinn has shared his story at Klick events and starred in the filming of an Ice Bucket Challenge video last summer in Toronto in which 70 Klick employees dumped buckets of ice in a domino-like fashion to spell the word Cure from above.
“It’s important that the world knows that they still need to find a cure,” Steinberg says of this year’s challenge.
Klick will also donate an undetermined amount of funds to the ALS Society of Canada to support ALS research.
