He's currently answering (tons of) questions, in video form, from "the internet"... youtube comments, reddit, twitter, including other celebs (with shows)... EW, Ellen Degeneres, etc. They are pumping these out extremely quickly, and in large volume.
It's maybe the best guerilla/viral/web2.0 marketing job I've ever seen. It helps, greatly, that this guy, and his team, are apparently comedic geniuses.
I'm pretty sure half of what makes these ads so awesome and popular with my friends is just how in touch Old Spice seems to be with the culture of their target audience. It's amazing to see a real corporation move like that.
"The tickets are now DIAMONDS!"
Perfect example. They hit a home run with that line, especially with their target audience.
nothing specifically awesome, it's just exactly in line with the sense of humor of my college friends, yet I don't think it'd fly with other people. qed, careful targeting.
They are created by Tim and Eric of Awesome Show fame on adult swim. They also created this commercial which is distilled genius: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p0QtJMKt1s
This video shows how that Old Spice ad was made --- minimal CGI! And incidentally, another Eric was involved.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDk9jjdiXJQ
(They smell like redditors...)
W+K fucking rock. Their internship program has kids who aren't hackers learning Arduino as a matter of course for automating visual merchanidising displays.
Good campaign, but not enough to offset Neal Stephenson's take on it:
Oh, they used to argue over times, many corporate driver-years lost to it:
homeowners, red-faced and sweaty with their own lies, stinking of Old Spice
and job-related stress, standing in their glowing yellow doorways brandishing
their Seikos and waving at the clock over the kitchen sink, I swear, can't
you guys tell time?
Its great because too many companies have forgotten the value of random humor in their commercials... It signifies a company taking a risk on a marketing campaign which makes it great, and its also great because of the diversity of characters they use in their commercials.
The point of ads is to get you thinking about and talking about a product you wouldn't have otherwise. It's nice if they improve your perception of the product, but that's not as important as just getting yourself into people's heads. e.g., "there's no such thing as bad press"
I wonder when this showed up in the idea creation. It all depends on a very actively audience engaged with the regular ads (in order to respond to comments via video response). Did they see the popularity and have an idea on how to use social tools to mid-campaign or was it in the works all along? Either way, genius.
Well I don't know if Twitter is screwing this up or if the account's been hacked somehow, but the twitter page is currently showing raw JSON instead of a formatted page...
the Reddit threads about this are hilarious as usual, and the Old Spice man appears to be answering comments from some of the users there. for those who want to read more...
I'm reminded of the new-old adage: "you can't polish a turd".
However 'in touch' Old Spice might be with the online generation (as someone wrote elsewhere in this thread), the product still smells like what someone's grandpa would wear.
How does this relate to startups? No matter how great your marketing might be, you gotta always be able to proposition the product right. Old Spice can't pivot and iterate their product because then it would no longer be Old Spice. Let's be thankful we can pivot with internet startups to find continued market fit.
However 'in touch' Old Spice might be with the online generation (as someone wrote elsewhere in this thread), the product still smells like what someone's grandpa would wear.
They know that, though, and go with it.
Example: a few years ago a relative gave a bunch of bath sets as Christmas gifts to everyone. The one I got was an Old Spice set, which bore the slogan: "If your grandfather hadn't worn it, you wouldn't exist."
"However 'in touch' Old Spice might be with the online generation (as someone wrote elsewhere in this thread), the product still smells like what someone's grandpa would wear."
To me, Old Spice smells like something a real man would wear, and Axe (for instance) smells like something a newly pubescent teen would wear. Grandpa won WWII; the Axe generation pretends to win WWII by playing first-person shooter video games.
Yeah, I guess I wouldn't wear either. I find the US market for men's fragrances is pretty dreadful compared to my original native UK.
It's basically Axe or Old Spice here, where as in UK the equivalent of Walgreens, Boots, stocks those brands but also slightly more expensive Ted Baker, French Connection, and a number of others.
I guess I'm getting off topic, though I'm totally shocked I got down-voted so much for my original comment. Perhaps Old Spice is an American thing.
"Men's fragrances" means cologne to me, and I'm under the impression we have proper cologne in this country.
Old Spice is what you rub under your arm so your sweat doesn't stink, traditionally. I don't categorize that as a fragrance per se, even though it has a dark manly scent to it. I guess they sell "body wash" now too, which is like soap but harder to use.
> However 'in touch' Old Spice might be with the online generation (as someone wrote elsewhere in this thread), the product still smells like what someone's grandpa would wear.
Is that automatically a bad thing? People like fedoras, and that's certainly something a grandpa would/did wear.
I remember maybe 5 years ago when I was re-entering the dating scene, I read in a few places that some women respond well told Old Spice simply because it was the fragrance their fathers wore. The logic to me seemed a bit creepy, but I did it anyway, and found that I liked it.
What Grandpa would wear is something that happens to be what a lot of men and women actually like a man to smell like.
Given that I'm now seemingly surrounded by hairless, wimpy, Justin Beiber fairy-men at every corner as the "ideal man", I wouldn't mind if Old Spice made a huge comeback.
Two contradicting trends in advertising to men (and culture) i've noticed lately:
Classic masculinity, of which this Old Spice campaign is an example. See also the Dos Equis guy, the sudden popularity of mustaches, steampunk, etc.
Homoeroticism. This cologne ad with David Beckham sums it up: http://tiny.cc/jhi6h. Or pop open a GQ or Esquire and see how many things are being sold to men using overtly sexual images of attractive men.
reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/cp190/the_old...
It's maybe the best guerilla/viral/web2.0 marketing job I've ever seen. It helps, greatly, that this guy, and his team, are apparently comedic geniuses.
e.g: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHrXKg2Fk5k