A social media strategy is almost a requirement at this point for any commercial brand. For most, the common combination of a Twitter and Facebook account fed with frequent posts is usually enough. With every tweet your followers are reminded of your existence, and if you are lucky enough, they may even click through to any links you provide. But harnessing the power of social media in a carefully orchestrated campaign utilizing all the major platforms? That’s an entirely different proposition – and quite a feat if it can be pulled off. Despite the challenge, that’s exactly what the creative team behind Old Spice did.
During the week of July 12th, the incredible creatives at Wieden+Kennedy managed to harness the freakishly strong power of social media to create one of the most memorable ad campaigns the Internet has seen yet. Over the course of two days, the team fielded questions from all over the Internet, and responded by writing and filming 87 short YouTube videos.
The right material for the job
If your target market intersects with the user base of your choice of social media platforms, there’s a direct connection to the walls and feeds of millions of potential customers that is just waiting to be made.
In case you are not already familiar with the Old Spice ads staring Isaiah Mustafa, they originally aired during the 2010 Super Bowl and later during the Winter Olympics. The first commercial shot with its mix of quick shots, random imagery and deadpan delivery proved to have the right recipe for viral Internet success resulting in over 16 million views on YouTube. By mid-July the “Old Spice guy” was already something of a household name in the dysfunctional households of various Internet communities. As a result, when a call was put out on Old Spice’s Twitter and Facebook pages for people to ask the Old Spice guy questions (you could basically ask him anything) word spread pretty fast, resulting in lots of submissions, giving the writers plenty of source material to riff on. Once received, the questions were sorted through and ranked for effectiveness, and a script was quickly written and filmed, resulting in a short and usually very funny YouTube clip.
The plan comes together
People soon realized what was going on – that there was a direct line to the Old Spice guy and that he might say your name and do something really weird in a widely viewed, personalized video. From there things really got rolling. Soon, such celebrities as Alyssa Milano, Rose McGowan and George Stephanopoulos, bloggers, and other specialty websites (with decent-sized communities, of course, to keep the buzz going) like Perez Hilton, G4TV’s Kevin Pereira (embedded below), gadget blog Gizmodo and the Huffington Post started asking questions. The resulting video responses were linked on traffic driving sites such as Digg and Reddit. And having the Old Spice guy respond directly to a Reddit user and to Digg founder Kevin Rose didn’t hurt either in getting that to happen.
But the great thing was that the videos didn’t have to feature a celebrity to be funny. Seemingly random users provided material that was just as good. And, like anybody who takes a photo with a celebrity or gets an autograph, they want to share it with everybody. Famous or not, when people received personalized videos, they ran back to their community of choice and posted them, further spreading the word.
The payoff
So by targeting high profile Internet figures, individual websites and users known only deep within their respective communities, the Old Spice guy responded to the entire internet. And apparently the whole stunt has paid off. As noted in Adweek “According to Nielsen data provided by Old Spice, overall sales for Old Spice body-wash products are up 11 percent in the last 12 months; up 27 percent in the last six months; up 55 percent in the last three months; and in the last month, with two new TV spots and the online response videos, up a whopping 107 percent.”
Google CFO Patrick Pichette even weighed in on the campaign noting that “It just gives you a glimpse of where the world is going”. Well the world may be going in that direction but how long will it take until people learn to tune it out as they have banner ads and television commercials? Will people allow the occasional weaving of marketing with their entertainment, or will they smell a sales pitch a mile away? Too bad the Old Spice guy isn’t taking any more questions….
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