By B.L. Ochman
As everyone and her dog has already noted, Weiden+Kennedy pulled off a remarkable social media feat for Old Spice body wash this week. Videos of the wry and incredibly sexy Old Spice guy – first introduced in a Super Bowl commercial in February – went viral in under 24 hours.
Original, hilarious, entertaining, and remarkably well-crafted – the Old Spice videos took both new and traditional media by storm.
The campaign raises the bar on production values, scripting, acting, lighting, and engagement. Unfortunately, people aren’t rushing out and buying Old Spice. (Update: A couple of commenters noted that those stats are not fair to use in relation to the week-old social media play, and they are right, so I am removing them. )
Alas, there are two problems with the campaign.
– Old Spice reeks.
– So does the strategy
The bottom line: there is no such thing as a social media strategy. There is business strategy incorporating social media. But if that strategy doesn’t include sales, it’s nothing more than a tactic. Tactics don’t move markets. (Bonus problem: if your target audience thinks your product sucks, nothing else matters.)
“Old Spice Responses” — a.k.a the string of custom-made videos — is one of the most popular online marketing campaigns of all time.
Responding to posts on Twitter, Reddit and other social sites, Mustafa and crew created real-time hilarious videos personally addressed to bloggers, celebrities and plain folk male and female fans.
* Total videos uploaded: 183
* Combined viewing figures: 10,954,096
* Average video view (mean value): 59,858 views
* Median value: 40,536 views ( Idgit | Old Spice)
* Most watched video: 511,694 views ( Perez Hilton | Old Spice)
(Source: We are Social)
Yeah, sure. Show me the money.
Yes, the campaign has/will create name recognition and brand awarenes. But it has no follow-up. There’s no QR code, no mobile app, no couponing, sampling, events, email list building through registration.
Sure the campaign primes the pump for the next Old Spice campaign. Sure it’ll be talked about for years to come, and it’ll win every award in Cannes and at the Webbies.
Five years ago, those things along would have been enough to make the campaign a success.
Sadly, however, you can’t eat, or pay bills with awareness. You gotta sell product.
In case you somehow missed the campaign (hard as that is to imagine): in 12 hours, former NFL wide receiver and incredibly sexy Isaiah Mustafa made a series of nearly 200 funny TV commercials pointing out that men who start using Old Spice deodorant and body wash could be as awesomely sexy as he. (See them on the Old Spice YouTube channel.)
Other views:
– John Bell
– Lisa Barone
– Mashable
– David Polinchock
– Gerard Mclean
It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that a big company will try something like this an not follow through.. which we’d all interpret as them NOT getting it.
But it is a stretch to assume Old Spice isn’t taking this as a first step into becoming the kind of company we all are saying is the future.
Sooner or later, one of them has to get it right :)
It’s a memorable campaign and I’ve enjoyed the videos…but I’m not switching brands.
To play devil’s advocate, how COULD Procter & Gamble added a “sell some product” component?
just a few of the possibilities:
QR codes on the video, with coupons
free samples if you sign up for ____
video interviews with women smelling Old Spice on their men – love it or hate it
mobile site with personalized videos
I agree on the sales and there should have been more “boots at retail” http://gerardmclean.com/old-spice-drops-the-ball-ten-yards-from-the-endzone.html BUT!!
Watch this unfold. This is a first step into positioning Old Spice as a cool retro brand that the kids will want. May not happen immediately, but it will explode out, just like vinyl LPs and Nutella. Patience. P&G has the money to afford to be patient.
I agree that sales will come from this eventually. This ad puts the product in people’s minds and when they see the product at the store they’ll remember the ad….which will hopefully translate into a purchase. The brand is already established and now its in the forefront of people’s minds. So to say that the strategy stinks…well maybe the goal was to get people talking about the brand.
It’s too early to declare the Old Spice campaign a failure because the sales numbers didn’t go up immediately. If there’s a problem, perhaps it’s that the target market — men like me — typically don’t give more than millisecond’s thought to the grooming products that we use.
Personally, I hadn’t thought about Old Spice in years. Now it’s back on my radar, and I’m open to trying it. I can’t believe that I’m alone in this.
It’s been, what, a week? And you’re already proclaiming that the campaign hasn’t translated into sales? Maybe most of the people who watched the videos just haven’t run out of deodorant yet.
The connection between successful ad campaign and sales has never been obvious or direct, and if you measured success on how sales looked the week after a campaign started, I challenge you to find more than a handful of ad campaigns in the entire history of advertising that you could call “successful” by that standard.
Give it some time, man. No need to jump to solid conclusions just because this is the topic of the moment. It will be a while before we can really say how this all played out–months at least.
What I’m saying is that there is no call to action in the campaign and the days when spending money just to get people talking about your brand are over. There are many ways calls to action could be built into the campaign, but none are apparent. The use of social media is nothing short of brilliant. but that’s no longer enough.
The campaign – smartly – is aimed at women because it’s often us who buy grooming products for men.
I don’t expect the numbers to go up immediately, but i did expect a call to action to be part of the campaign, and it’s not.
The other problem is that Old Spice is an old man’s scent, and dressing it up with a cool campaign is not unlike putting lipstick on a pig.
talk is no longer enough. it was in the early days of social media. but now social media has to be part of sales strategy and not a pure play on its own.
the work is brilliant, it’s the strategy that falls short. the ads are entertaining, funny, ironic., etc, etc. They should win awards for creative. but they dropped the ball before they got to the call to action.
and there’s another fundamental problem: Old Spice reeks. times and tastes have changed.
I haven’t any direct experience with the product itself, so I can’t comment on your low opinion of it. But I don’t think you really have anything substantial to back up your claim that a call to action is absolutely essential, and “the days when spending money just to get people talking about your brand are over”, that this sort of thing is “no longer enough.”
Maybe you’re right; time will tell if this was worth it. I will say that I wonder how much this campaign actually did cost them–compared with TV advertising, how much could these short response videos really cost? Sure there are production costs to consider, but they didn’t have to pay for timeslots the way they would have on TV.
In any event, you may be right, but as of now you’ve only your knee-jerk opinion to back it up–and my knee-jerk opinion differs, so I suppose time will tell :)
The @oldspice creative is outstanding, no question. But I agree they missed the boat by not engaging the audience past responding real time to tweets, which delighted people, but then what? Where was the nudge to visit oldspice.com … oh, because the only thing you can do there is download a ring tone. And screen savers. Really? There’s an op to win a race car driver’s towel, too. Huh? Anyway, will be interesting to see what they do next. Who knows, maybe they’ll be the next PBR. Stranger things have happened. Now, if they can just convince teenage boys that girls like it better than Axe. THAT stuff reeks!
I agree with the points there– there is an accountability for sales that we don’t know has been met yet.
You do point to some articles that suggest sales are down- however, I think those figures ended in June- we won;t know if this social media campaign (along with any integrated marketing they should be doing, especially in-store display ads, etc) has had a real effect.
Might have to wait out the quarter (?) but will be interesting to see
The article that is quoted that says “Red Zone After Hours body wash sales have fallen seven percent, despite the ads.” is coming from a report that is referring to the TV ads (follow the source links), NOT the viral campaign of last week.
To write a post about the viral campaign using a source that is talking about the TV campaign is dishonest and misleading.
Doesn’t the increase in connected consumers create significant opportunity to market products? Don’t get me wrong… I agree that more direct integration could have been included, but the value of the connection has to be worth a significant amount and the effort. Does engagement always have to include conversion? I would argue that it does not.
While I share your qualms – my main concern is the old man legacy that you cite. That’s evidenced by the apparent fact that most people have missed the point that they’re trying to sell shower gel which comes in a variety of “flavours” most of which smell nothing like the scent.
It would have been a great campaign for a new scent.
bad example, maybe, “dishonest and misleading” Get serious!
You’re right dishonest and misleading was a little harsh, and I see the author has corrected it, well done.
Notwithstanding my qualms stated above – I understand bodywash sales have risen by 107% in a month.
please show me the numbers and the source.
you wouldn’t happen to work on the account, would you? :>)
the online campaign is ONE WEEK old. sales in the last MONTH are not a result of the online campaign.
same reason I took the sales figures based on the TV commercial out of the post.
time will tell, but this is not an increase resulting from the week-old online campaign.
Simply, I fail to see how this is any different than the “Will It Blend?” campaign you just praised last month, which has a 207-week head start to earn your positive reaction and to integrate the seven points you note.
.
The difference as I see it is that Blendtec is demonstrating its product in a really creative way. The goal of that is not just to create buzz. The videos humanize the brand, demonstrate the product, and are a damn convincing way to show that the blender is worth $400 because it’s clearly a very, very powerful blender.
The Old Spice videos are all about buzz. Today, buzz is not the end all. There’s a store on the Old Spice Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/OldSpice Do you see a way to buy the body wash that the videos are about? Nope.
Do you see a coupon or a QR code anywhere on the Old Spice website so you can try the body wash? Nope.
That wouldn’t exactly be a hard sell. It would be marketing integration. That’s what’s missing.
I’m quite sure we’ll be seeing more of it in the future. but why not include it now?