Old Spice

Every now and again a marketing campaign comes around that manages to cross an imaginary boundary that exists between ‘the industry’ and ‘the outside world’.

What I mean is, we (members of ‘the industry’) will often comment and discuss the brilliant merits of a particular marketing campaign from the point of view of creativity, technical merit or results. However, everyone else (‘the outside world’) can often be oblivious to these things. Brilliant metrics and results simply don’t affect their individual, everyday lives. Then along comes a campaign that taps into something special and hits all the right notes. A previous example was Compare The Meerkat, which I have posted about several times, but what has happen here is even better.

Top notch admen Wieden + Kennedy have taken a brand that many perceived as old and dated, and not only won a Cannes Film Grand Prix but created a Social Media frenzy. Their campaign for Old Spice launched in February during the Super Bowl and has gone from strength to strength to strength. Featuring former American Football star Isaiah Mustafa, the campaign is all about just how awesomely manly he is, and how ‘your man’ could smell like him.

The campaign saw immediate success with millions of video views of the ads on YouTube but the real success, imho, has been the personalised responses that have been created for everyone from celebrities to renowned bloggers to ordinary folk who published questions or comments to the campaigns various touchpoints (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc.). These personalised video messages are all viewable on the Old Spice YouTube channel and are absolutely hilarious. The campaign has been so successful in fact that the Old Spice YouTube channel is now the most viewed sponsored channel on the video platform.

The question of course that still remains is weather this online goodwill translates into sales. I can’t imagine it won’t but for now that’s just my opinion. Stay tuned and I’ll update with news as it comes out.