Wednesday Wisdom 12/11: A Banana And An Ice Bucket

The Art of Inspiring Action and Emotion

by Greg Lorenzo

Two seemingly unrelated events occurred this past week that are worth noting. Artist Maurizio Cattelan earned prominence for his duct-taped banana sculpture and athlete/activist Pete Frates passed away 7 years after being diagnosed with ALS. These unique men from opposite worlds, with vastly different missions, shared an important skill that all marketers strive for: the ability to inspire action and emotion without directly asking for it or spending any money.

We begin with Maurizio Cattelan and the suspended banana, which he titled “Comedian” and successfully sold 3 times for $120,000+ each. When first hearing about the “sculpture”, I wondered if the modern art world had finally self-destructed…but then the weekend happened and Cattelan’s genius emerged. The Italian artist turned the niche Art Basel into a national story in the New York Post and the NBC Nightly News, provoking a variety of emotions from the general public including anger, frustration and envy.

You can read all about the defense of his piece in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. They explain his long career as a suspension artist and the rationale for his latest mockable sculpture. But whether or not you buy their arguments, Cattelan’s work deserves recognition due to the nation-wide actions it inspired.

Cattelan used MAYA (most advanced, yet accessible) and optimized a sculpture for the Instagram Age. The piece was “advanced” enough to gross $390,000, but “accessible” enough to be replicated in just a few minutes. Thousands of people started posting their own Cattelan-inspired art over the weekend. It began with diagonally taped bananas, and quickly (d)evolved to vegetables, hot sauce, coconut water, Aviation gin, MacBooks, and even people, which was ironic since Cattelan had actually done that back in 1999 before social media. While everyone was receiving thousands of likes for their art-world-mocking “sculptures”, they were actually proving the power of Cattelan’s piece for him. Art doesn’t have to be complicated to be art. If a piece is eliciting emotions, if you’re sharing it and better yet, if it’s inspiring you to create new works, it’s not just art, it’s great art.

Don’t confuse the easy act of taping fruit to a wall with the gutsy move to prominently feature such a simple and expensive piece at a reputable festival. (Yes, Yoko Ono did it in 1966, but for a very different generation.) Think about it another way as a common marketing challenge. If your assignment was to garner the most attention for your brand at a major festival full of incredible artistic talents with no additional media spend AND you had to inspire thousands to take action, could you have thought of the “Comedian”? It was a genius move reminiscent of one of the greatest group call-to-actions of our generation.

Which brings us to the late, great Pete Frates, a fellow Boston College alumnus and baseball team captain who was diagnosed with ALS during the summer of 2012. Shocked with the lack of progress in curing the disease since Lou Gehrig succumbed to it 70 years prior, he wanted to raise money for more research. Yet he found the fundraising environment crowded by thousands of charities supporting other reputable causes. After two years of fundraising, his progress had stagnated.

Pro golfer Chris Kennedy was the first to use the Ice Bucket Challenge as a way to put a smile on the face of a relative who was battling ALS. He dumped a bucket of ice water on his head and then challenged friends and relatives to do the same. The stunt made its way around town and eventually to Frates up in Boston. Although at that moment he wasn’t well enough to take the challenge himself, Frates reached out to high profile athletes in Boston and asked them to participate.

Frates mission was to raise money to cure ALS, but his ask was to partake in the water-dumping challenge. The donations afterwards were voluntary.

The professional athlete community in Boston is tight and quickly jumped into action for Pete. First it was Patriot Julian Edelman, Bruin Patrice Bergeron and former Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan. Then the whole Patriot team participated in the challenge together followed by entire communities gathering in town squares dousing each other in unison. Pretty soon, the buzz they created went national and a cause that had garnered just $50,000 so far that year, inspired hundreds of thousands of people and raised $115 million over the following six weeks. The money was used to make significant progress slowing down the disease. Frates himself beat the 3–5 year life expectancy by 2 years, which gave him more time with his new family as a father and husband.

Frates didn’t invent the ice bucket challenge, but he lit a fire under it with a powerful broadcast moment and created the momentum it needed to spread across the country.

As with all great ideas, the Ice Bucket Challenge was imitated by other organizations in an attempt to repeat the formula and reap the same rewards. However, the technique was used so often that it lost its effectiveness to drastically increase funding for a single organization. We will always remember the six weeks in 2014 that inspired incredible actions from people across the country and showcased the good we can do together. Pete’s passing is the end of one chapter of the ALS cure journey, but we believe that the momentum he created will lead to more research breakthroughs that can prevent, cure or further slow down the disease.

THE LESSONS OF FRATES & CATTELAN

Outside of crime, politics and natural disasters, it sometimes seems impossible to capture the attention of the country without a major media budget. Frates and Cattelan remind us that it is possible to outkick your (media budget) coverage with originality, multiple emotions, and broadcast simplicity.

Originality

If you copy what someone has done before because they were successful, you probably won’t be. Without an unique twist, people catch on to the marketing “trick” and the effectiveness is lost. However, originality isn’t for everyone. It takes boldness to try something that hasn’t been proven effective.

Multiple Emotions

Researchers have established that events are more memorable when you experience multiple emotions, especially when they range from negative to positive. Notice the fear in people’s eyes as they prepared to be doused with ice followed by the pain of the cold…and soon the relief when it’s all over. This often overlooked phenomenon helped make the ice bucket challenge more impactful. The majority of people we talked to still remember their participation in the movement much more vividly than the checks they wrote for other charities.

Broadcast Simplicity

Even with multiple emotions, both stunts were easy to broadcast — they are explainable in one sentence, created in under 10 minutes and make for great content that elicits laughs and even more imitation.

Lead with Fun

Finally, and most importantly, true intentions are artfully hidden beneath the fun of the experience. Just as Cattelan didn’t tell everyone to imitate his work, Frates didn’t directly tell people to donate money to ALS…For Cattelan, it was about selling the piece and letting culture take over, while for Frates it was about challenging people to dump ice water on their heads. The donations came second, and weren’t required. This should be an obvious point, but one major industry has failed to grasp the concept…

Next Week:

As middle school tobacco use has doubled over the past 2 years, we examine why anti-smoking campaigns have failed and how to apply the techniques we discussed today to reverse the trend.