Hello, ladies...

Disclaimer: yes, I realize my timeliness on this is about a year late, but I just started the blog less than a week ago so gimme a break!




I really wish that I was still in school so I could write a 50 page long case study on this campaign. It is sheer brilliance and one of the few examples of a social media slam dunk.

Old Spice (parent company: P&G) was established way back in 1934 and was suffering from serious old-man appeal/young man aversion...that is, until Wieden + Kennedy came riding in on its white horse. The goal was to create some buzz around the recently revamped brand image by tapping into a younger market, in hopes of grabbing more market share.

With their "Old Spice Man" campaign, creative directors Jason Bagley and Eric Baldwin did something that (to my knowledge) hasn't been done by another male body wash company - and that's to appeal to the ladies. It makes perfect sense: we want them to smell good and they want to smell good for us. It's by no means a stretch of the imagination to picture a man buying the type of body wash or cologne his girlfriend likes. Their strategy: getting the girls to like it = getting the guys to like it.

Enter Isaiah Mustafa, the new face of Old Spice. A beautiful man with a beautiful voice...not to mention those abs. Combine all that with his complimentary smooth-talking, and you've got the the man we wish our man could be. But they can smell like him! The humor appeals to both men and women - hyperbole and utter ridiculousness, specifically - so you're hitting both audiences.

The response to the ads was huge, to say the least. One just one week, YouTube views topped 40 million. W+K had anticipated as much, and was ready with a plan to capitalize on all the buzz they'd created. In the next 2 days (TWO. DAYS.) they filmed 186 video responses to fan comments on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. (I can't imagine how exhausted the crew was) They became the #1 all-time branded channel on YouTube, their fanbase, followers, website traffic, yadda yadda went up a bajillion percent, they ended up winning a bunch of awards, got a ton of press, and their sales skyrocketed.

So, what did W+K do right in what they call “the fastest-growing and most popular interactive campaign in history"? Oh...just everything imaginable. But here are my ideas on the specifics:

• Appealed to women on the surface, but to both men and women in the humor used.
• Isaiah Mustafa - the perfect brand ambassador. Enough said.
  
• Went for the ultra-masculine appeal - a backlash against the current (now becoming former) trend of guys being metrosexual.
  
• The style of filming: did it all in one shot, keeping it fast-paced, engaging, and it helped to cement the character trait of "smoothness."
• Used the right channels to reach their target audience of youngins - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, etc.
• Understood the immediacy of social media, the need to participate in the conversation right away, and the desire for people to engage with characters they love.
• Capitalized on the high traffic and kept the momentum going with the 186 rapid-fire, personalized video responses.
• Caught on to the fact that celebs were engaging (Ellen DeGeneres, Alyssa Milano, George Stephanopoulos, etc.) and responded via video, thereby grabbing their fanbases as well.
• Captured the highly passionate Digg and Reddit crowds by targeting Kevin Rose (Digg founder) and giving Reddit a shoutout.
  
  

Watch W+K's case study of the campaign and its results here. Kudos to the Old Spice team - a social media campaign done right. Very rare indeed.