

Reality: Old Spice sales are down since ad campaign began - cwan
http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/despite-enormous-popularity-old-spice-guy-not-helping-sales--1403

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SamAtt
Forbes contradicts this (<http://tinyurl.com/2exqhg7>). Here's the quote...

And, perhaps, persuasive. Total sales for Old Spice body wash at supermarkets,
drugstores and mass market retailers excluding Wal-Mart were up 16.7% in the
52-week period ending June 13, according to SymphonyIRI Group, a Chicago-based
market research firm.

So the yahoo article is singling out the one sub-brand of body wash in the Old
Spice Man's hand (which is down) but the brand itself seems to be up. Now I
don't know about the rest of you but I didn't even notice what specific type
of Old Spice Body Wash he was holding and I don't think others had either. So
I don't think that specific sub-brand's falling sales reflect on the ads at
all.

(To give the appropriate plug I actually found the forbes link via this site:
<http://tinyurl.com/27d9aer>)

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Elite
This makes more sense to me. It would be very surprising if what I think one
of the most engaging ad campaigns in recent memory had a NEGATIVE impact on
sales.

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a-priori
Not saying it happened here, but one way this could happen is if the ad
campaign alienated a large segment of the brand's existing consumer base.

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raganwald
In all fairness to the team behind this, they're obviously trying to cross the
product over into a new demographic. If Old Spice's existing demographic is
dying off, there can be a huge payoff if they succeed in making it hip and
ironic. Remember the Black Label campaigns in the 90s? That succeeded in
turning a moribund beer brand into a hip brand. It's worth swinging the bat a
few times over the next five years to see if they can do something with Old
Spice.

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Tichy
I guess they should have used the occasion to say "oh by the way, we are now
called 'young spice'".

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edanm
Isn't it way too early to tell what the effects of the campaign are?

I for one had never heard of Old Spice before, still haven't actually seen
their product (not so prevalent here), but I do look out for it when I go to
buy deodarant, since I want to try it out.

~~~
_pi
Last time I "tried" Old Spice I got a rash. They make crappy deodorant. It's
okay if you're used to it but if you switch prepare for the worst. For some
reason I've found this to be more common with Old Spice rather than any other
deodorant brand.

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sprout
I've gotten a rash from just about every deodorant on the market after half a
container or so. The only ones I trust are the simple white cake ones. And
they usually say 'dermatologist tested' since they require a gimmick to be
sold.

I wish we could go back to when nobody wore the stuff.

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goatforce5
You might want to try a crystal body deodorant, such as this (or an equivalent
brand):

<http://www.thecrystal.com/crystal_story.cfm>

Costs about $5 or $6. I got mine at my local drug store (if yours doesn't
carry it, try a health food kinda store). They're supposed to last at least a
year.

I made the switch about 4 months ago and am happy with it.

~~~
silencio
One thing to note is that that's only a deodorant, not an antiperspirant. It
certainly helps prevent smells with no lingering perfume, but that's it.

I tried the Crystal deodorant and was happy with it, but I had to switch back
to my regular antiperspirant because sweating led to chafing, not body odor (I
shower 1-2x a day). If I wasn't concerned about sweating (cold day at home, no
workout), I'd probably use the Crystal stuff again.

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j_baker
My first instincts are to assume this is a "post hoc ergo propter hoc"
statement. Just because sales are falling doesn't mean the commercial is
ineffective. After all, how do you know that sales wouldn't be down 14%
without the ads?

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MrRage
If that's the case then you can say the commercial is ineffective, because you
can say that the commercial didn't raise sales. You can never conclusively say
that the commercial raised sales when they're up or lowered sales when they're
down, but the commercial surely didn't raise sales when they're down.

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MrRage
For those who are downvoting me, care to explain why I deserve it? Where am I
wrong?

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alex_stoddard
You seem to have missed the point of the question "After all, how do you know
that sales wouldn't be down 14% without the ads?".

The commercial is not the only thing affecting sales. If there is some other
factor driving sales down strongly the sales may still fall overall even if
the commercial is successful (i.e. attracted a large number of sales).

~~~
MrRage
I see. My point was that good advertising should increase sales not slow the
decrease of sales. But I guess when you're running a business that's tanking
the OP would be correct in calling the ad effective.

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rythie
This really is a poor article.

It's not stated if that's a new product or an established one they are talking
about. Also, whilst they say one product is down, what about the others? If
you dig into the bnet article
([http://industry.bnet.com/advertising/10007535/the-old-
spice-...](http://industry.bnet.com/advertising/10007535/the-old-spice-guy-a-
media-darling-has-a-dirty-secret-sales-are-down/)) you see that the sales
figures are for the 52 weeks upto the 13 June - long before the online
campaign started.

All the yahoo video links fail to load properly for me. The mention YouTube
but don't link to it all. They link to their own previous coverage for no good
reason.

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scelerat
Conventional advertising wisdom revolves around brand awareness. Old Spice
just got millions of people to say "Old Spice" to their friends a hundred
times a day each with a big happy smile on their face. If sales are down, I'd
bet its anomalous and/or too soon to tell. Look at the numbers six months to a
year from now.

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bdickason
This is the irony of most internet advertising campaigns. Media Buyers (the
people who organize ad campaigns) are graded on three things: -Brand Awareness
(how many people see it) -CPM/Cost Per Mille (how much the ad costs per 1000
impressions) -CTR/Click Thru Rate (how many people clicked on the ads)

Most ad campaigns have nothing to do with actually trying to drive product and
most ad agencies are not tied to incentives surrounding product sales.

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jsz0
No advertising campaign is going to make people rush into their bathroom,
throw away all their old supplies, and rush out and buy new ones. You'd need
to look at least a few months of sales to determine how successful it was.

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nevinera
>Are the women targeted by the ads not actually the ones making body-wash-
related decisions for the men in their life?

Those ads are clearly not targeted at women.

~~~
silencio
Neither are their products. :( As a woman, the ads amused me so much that I
was tempted to buy one of their products, but it was the fairly masculine
scents that put me off. If Old Spice ever sold unscented products (looks like
they did at some point, then gave up on those..), or products with more
feminine scents, I'd probably try it at least once just because of the social
media success.

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dmm
> perfect example of the male body

Ha! I must spend too much time around weightlifters/powerlifters. He looked a
little scrawny to me.

Another interesting case of internet popularity not translating into sales was
"Snakes on a Plane". From wikipedia:

""" Due to the Internet hype surrounding the film, industry analysts estimated
the film's opening box office to be between US$20 million and US$30
million.[4] While Snakes on a Plane did narrowly beat Talladega Nights: The
Ballad of Ricky Bobby for the number one position during its opening weekend,
it did not meet these estimates and grossed only $US15.25 million in its
opening days, a disappointment for New Line Cinema. ""

~~~
raganwald
While I admire powerlifters, I wouldn't consider an extremely muscular body
aesthetically perfect. My man crush is on athletes who are muscular but not
extremely so, like Greg Louganis, Rafer Johnson, or Roger Federer.

Federer can carry my bags any day ;-)

~~~
dmm
I never said that powerlifters were perfect. There are obviously many
attractive body types. And almost anything is more attractive than the fat
standard. Physical beauty is pretty small thing. We all get old. It matters a
lot more what you create and how you treat children.

I was just making a little observation about how much perspective matters. No
insult was intended for the gentlemen in question. It's just that after
hanging around with powerlifters I probably would call someone with a bigger
chest/shoulders perfect.

But downvote away! I have karma to burn.

~~~
raganwald
I save my downvotes for comments that lower the quality of discourse.
Disagreeing with me in many cases raises the level of intelligence of a
discussion even if I don't personally like it :-)

~~~
dmm
> I save my downvotes for comments that lower the quality of discourse.

Interesting strategy. I usually reserve mine for people who use ruby.

~~~
raganwald
> I usually reserve mine for people who use ruby.

Downvote away! I have karma to burn. ;-)

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brm
Either way, when your ad campaign is the most remarkable thing about your
product you still have a problem.

~~~
detst
What's remarkable about any of their competitors?

