Water bucket challenge a game changer for marketing strategists, experts say.

Whether youve risen to the ALS Associations Ice Bucket Challenge with enthusiasm, or its oversaturation on social media has turned you into a wet blanket, local marketing experts said the craze has undeniably become a game changer for fundraising campaigns.

Sure, theres been some backlash. Some say its become more about vanity than charity. In the past two days, meanwhile, the Newark archdiocese, and Catholic dioceses in Ohio and Louisiana, have expressed concerns over the ALS Associations funding of research involving embryonic stem cells.

Nonetheless, not since breast cancers invention of the pink ribbon has a charity found such an explosively successful way to raise money and public awareness, according to industry observers. Other charities will have to do more than just come up with the next viral gimmick. Theyll have to invent something as innovative and groundbreaking, whatever it might be. Either that, or capitalize on the recent backlash against the craze.

But what have Facebook, Twitter and donating money ever been but a means for people to make themselves look good, marketing professionals ask. As long as it raises awareness and money, everybody wins.

How to explain why things go viral? In many ways, said industry observers, it isnt anything new. That bucket challenges surfaced on a grass-roots level and spread virally traces back to a business phenomenon as old as the hills: word of mouth, said Professor Ashwani Monga, chairman of the Marketing Department at Rutgers Business School in Newark.

"As we know, word of mouth matters most in any successful product or method. So in that sense, it has definitely worked," he said.

But why has the act of pouring cold water over our heads, for all the world to see, been such a digital draw? Again, observers said, the concept is steeped in timeless traditions born long before the advent of YouTube. Remember that concession at the school fundraising carnival, where you throw a ball and try to dunk your school principal in that big pool of cold water? Sound a little familiar?

"Theres no such thing as an original idea," said Anthony Torre, co-founder and chief marketing officer with Spitball Advertising in Red Bank. "Its a matter of transforming the idea in such a way that it becomes interesting again."

Both the carnival dunking booth and the ice bucket challenge share the same crucial selling point, he said: "Both are public forums in which we can make people look silly."

Except that now, rather than its being confined to the school principal, just about anyone who is anyone is willing to look silly if it means being seen on the Internet. And yes, while donating to a worthy cause. Locally, participants have run the gamut everyone from Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan, to Governor Christie, to various county freeholders, police officers and fire captains, some mayors, the Ridgewood High School boys soccer team, Audi Meadowlands General Manager Chris DeMarsico and 31 of his employees. And thats just to name a few.

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Water bucket challenge a game changer for marketing strategists, experts say.