14 DAY TRIAL // Less than 24 hours after Phil Schiller, Apple's vice-president of Marketing poured an ice water bucket onto his head, Tim Cook did the same for charity. Apple's CEO accepted the challenge in front of all the company's employees gathered for a corporate event inside Cupertino Headquarters.
The moment was chosen when musician Michael Franti was on the stage. After one of the songs, Tim Cook got on the same stage where Phil Schiller was waiting with a bucket filled with ice in his hand.
Apple's head promised he's not going to choose between the bucket of water on his head and donating money to for ALS Research, but he going to do both. First, he nominated Dr. Dre he has been "known to make a few videos. He is one of us now", Cook said. Everyone was asking him to nominate Jony Ive, Apple's head of Design, but he went another direction. His second choice was Bob Iger, Disney's CEO, "one of my friends and one of our board members" and then he got back to Michael Franti, the musician standing next to him, "but he has to do it today", Tim Cook added.
After that, the head of Apple went in front of the stage and stood there to take his ice-cold bucket of water, while the band was playing Vanilla Ice's song, "Ice, Ice, baby". Tim Cook got a bug hug from Michael Franti and a dry towel from Phil Schiller.
Franti was next to get soaked so he challenged the actor Woody Harrelson, U2's front man Bono and finally the american TV star, Oprah Winfrey. Tim Cook was the one pouring the ice water onto his head while the band kept on playing.
Tim Cook is the second Apple personality to get into the campaign for helping ALS patients. Also he is among some of the tech world's biggest CEOs to take this challenge, right after Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft's front man, Satya Nadella.
ALS is short for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that affects the nerve cells in the spinal cord and the brain of the patients. ALS affects the muscles so the people affected by it will not be able to move and eventually die. There is no cure or treatment for this terrible disease so that's why everyone around the world is getting into this campaign.
The participants have to choose if they want to get soaked in ice-cold water or donate $100 (€74.7) for ALS research. In the past two weeks, over $4 million (€3 million) have been raised. The money goes to the ALS Association and the work with pharmaceutical companies and academia to find a way to stop this disease.
