The Wisdom of the Old Spice Man
Posted Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 4:46 pm by Jo (47 posts)
As of Wednesday, Old Spice is officially the king of viral marketing. (They’ve even crowned themselves.) And we could learn a lot from them.
If you missed their amazing day of viral content, you might be living in a cabin in the woods (without WiFi), but ReadWriteWeb has a very good summary of their campaign. In a nutshell, they released a series of dozens of viral videos, produced almost in real-time, where their Old Spice Man, Isaiah Mustafa, responded personally to comments on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and bloggers.
There are a lot of factors you could point to as critical for their success, not all of which can be easily reproduced. For example:
- a great sense of humor (and the ability to laugh at themselves)
- an incredibly sexy, half-naked spokesman
- a now-legendary production team making ad-quality videos at a rate of 7 minutes per video
- lots of freedom from the corporate higher-ups
But what impressed me most, and the reason they became a trending topic on Twitter, is the personal attention they paid to their audience. Not everyone got flowers like Alyssa Milano. But anyone who messaged Old Spice that day had a chance at their own video. You didn’t have to be a celebrity to get a few seconds of Mustafa’s personal attention.
Even if you didn’t get your own personal video response, you still felt like he might be talking to you. (And by “you,” I mean me. I’m pretty sure he was talking to me.)
You can’t fake that kind of personal attention – but you can achieve it with a little hard work, no matter whether you’re a tiny non-profit or an international corporation. Maybe you don’t have the whole world paying attention to you. But someone is paying attention, and you can pay attention right back at them. You don’t need a handsome spokesman, just a Twitter account, a Facebook page, or a volunteer with a phone.
Though, a handsome spokesman wouldn’t hurt.
Since it’s Friday, here are a couple more videos for you:
July 21st, 2010 at 12:59 pm
While we all love these ads (like, REALLY love…), it looks like the market isn’t as much of a fan. Old Spice sales have actually dropped 7%.( http://www.publicradio.org/columns/marketplace/business-news-briefs/2010/07/old_spice_sales_drop_7_despite.html)
With all the media attention, viral appeal and soon-to-be-pop-icon status, is this because the ads are not targeting the right market? Women love Mr. Old Spice, but men are the ones doing the buying. Thoughts?
July 21st, 2010 at 1:09 pm
It makes sense to me that this could happen. Even beyond the question of who was being targeted and who does the buying, I think at some point a marketing campaign can become so successful that is transcends the product. Also the content of the videos is really very abstracted from Old Spice. It’s more about Mustafa than body wash.
July 22nd, 2010 at 8:24 am
This campaign was absolutely brilliant. As someone who rarely falls for these kinds of marketing ploys, I found myself watching these videos over and over again (although that’s easy to do when you’re up at 3:00am with a 7-month old). It almost made me want to Tweet myself (which, despite my previous post does not happen that often). But then I decided not to, because, and Jo, I hate to break your heart, he was already talking to me.