Old Spice: A Swan Dive Into The Award Winning Campaign

The man your man could smell like has given us all a high – metaphorically, as the internet is buzzing with commentary about the award winning campaign, and literally as we all rush to pharmacies and sniff the product from the isles. Old Spice reminds us not only of the characteristics we wish we could find in our men, but also the traits we desire from our agencies, clients and campaigns.

Based on a superficial analysis, it may appear as if the success of the viral Old Spice campaign is the result of a traditional recipe: hot sauce (model Isaiah Mustafa) + very little dressing (no shirt), blended with new appliances (Twitter and YouTube).  Yet the genius lies not in its ingredients but the concepts behind them.

1) Form Meets Content

With any piece of writing or art, magic can be created by matching form and content.  Just as good perfume should last through the long hours of a day, so should a marketing campaign cling to viewers’ memories despite the never-ending competition for attention online. Beyond the entertaining and fast-paced commercial, Old Spice took over the web in a day by seeding out real-time information and floating at the surface of the Twitter Sea, thus remaining relevant.

2) NonFiction Advertising

Sure we all love the world behind the computer and TV screens – but don’t we all secretly wish we could hug Hugh Grant when he looks bewildered… or just speaks in general with that cute British accent of his? By responding to Twitter requests in real time by video, Old Spice takes the character out of the studio and brings him to the audience in flesh and bone. And how much easier is it for the target audience to identify with someone who’s real?

3) Personalization

The age of the template is coming to a quick end. With TIME magazine picking YOU as person of the year, everyone wants everything tailored – why shouldn’t they? The guys over at Old Spice really hit the nail on the head by providing each blogger or tweeter with a personalized video tailored to address their specific question. Who wouldn’t want to share this with friends or embed it on their blog? I would, you would, and so would Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore – who did just that.

4) Transparency

This is obviously our favorite one here at BlueGLASS – clarity. Real-time is tricky as it involves producing content extremely fast and making it accessible to the public. It opens the door to all kinds of possible bloopers but most importantly, it portrays sincerity.

5) Curiosity

Perhaps the most important element in any marketing effort is to lure new customers to try out a new product. As I joked earlier, I suspect a very large number of people have flocked to Walgreens to sniff the deodorant and find out what this desirable smell is like. Yet this campaign induces curiosity on various levels. Not only do I want to smell that smell, I want to know how the people behind the Old Spice campaign is managing to produce so much content in such short amount of time, if they have a team writing or just a hot man and an intern behind a camera, I want to know what’s behind the towel (metaphorically!)…

All of these interests ultimately lead to the desire for interactivity – the want to become a part of the experience and interact with the brand in ways other than merely buying a product. This, my friends, is what social media marketing is about.

Finally, let us not forget the level of trust necessary between client and agency to allow for such efforts to take place. Beyond innovation, opening up the possibility to (near) real-time interaction is frightening in terms of possible control loss. Yet being great inevitably involves taking creative risks.

An Explosion of Manliness: How the Campaign Swandove Into The Best Time Of Its Life

OK, enough with the theory already – these are all wonderful but what is it that made THIS campaign so popular? Certainly not every campaign that can check those elements off a list will go viral – in fact the current Old Spice campaign has quite a long history including very interesting videos with similar characteristics that did not become nearly as popular. In fact, you can read about the entire retrospective right here. What differentiated the current campaign featuring Isaiah Mustafa are a few practical elements:

First, we all know that the integration of various channels of communication made this campaign particularly holistic and attention-grabbing. But what truly ignited the buzz explosion was the team’s very wise selection of response targets.  In this intriguing interview, the team behind the campaign explains that they chose people of all levels of influence in devising responses. While this helped them maintain the videos’ image as sincere and real, it must be said that it was their conversations with celebrities that most efficiently spread the manly seeds across the web.

The campaign really hit viral status when Digg CEO Kevin Rose tweeted about getting over his pneumonia.

By closely monitoring Twitter chatter, the team managed to involve Mr. Rose by kindly offering him “get well” wishes in the form of a studly video, along with some neat information about ears and their immunity against fevers.

This subsequently got his pal Ashton Kutcher involved. On Twitter, @aplusk wrote:

“If you don’t feel better after this @kevinrose I don’t know what will help http://bit.ly/bZn4hu”

Mr. Kutcher happens to have kind of a big following on Twitter… of “1.2 gagillion” to be exact.

Involved celebrities didn’t just share content – they participated. Another notable case was the exchange with Alyssa Milano, who complemented the campaign and received 4 different personalized videos.

Topics addressed included nose CPR and an allusion to a bouquet of roses that actually made it to Alyssa’s doorstep – yes, in the real world.

Alyssa responded to the act of shameless flirtation (that ended with “So tell me what to do next”) by asking him / the agency in the Old Spice ethnic attire – a bath towel – to donate money to charity.

Suddenly the conversation transcended marketing, humor or fun – it was about a real interaction that affected the offline world in very tangible ways.

Other “influential” characters who had the honor of receiving a personalized video include Ellen Degeneres, the beautiful Mrs. Kutcher (Demi Moore), Perez Hilton, actress Rose McGowan and celebrity Digger Andrew Sorcini (aka Mr. BabyMan) – which brought the story to Digg’s front page even though he didn’t submit it himself.

Speaking of hitting a flock of Twitter birds with one stone (via ReTweets), another factor that truly differentiates the Mustafa Old Spice series from its predecessors is its target audience. Earlier videos included elements deemed awesome by males but disgusting to their counterparts – see for yourself. Yet Mustafa appeals to both audiences, succeeding at manliness in its every sense.

The final element to have differentiated the Old Spice campaign from any other is actually completely separate from the product and agency. Due to the sum of elements outlined above, the light at the end of the tunnel was an unparalleled treasure chest of User Generated Content.  First, a group of Reddit users took the initiative to create the Old Spice voice mail, available in multiple versions for males and females. Beyond the short commercials and genius set of videos, this allows for the Old Spice manly man to live forever as the representative of individuals who either love the campaign or want to be like him.

And now that the video responses craze is over, the campaign lives on in the form of parody videos. Here are some of our favorites:

Even though there has been a significant amount of buzz regarding the campaign’s failure at directly increasing sales, the genius of this campaign lies in its huge success at rebranding Old Spice as modern, sexy, manly, and most importantly – recognized by people all over the globe. Morever, it opens up the way to what may be the new world order of marketing – one where everything is targeted beyond keywords.

What were your overall impressions of the campaign? Any lessons you learned that weren’t mentioned – comments, critiques? Share with us below!

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