Introducing… The Post-Old-Spice-Hall-of-Fame
A couple of months ago Old Spice pulled of one of the greatest marketing coup d’etats of all time, taking but a few days to become the proud owners of the most popular branded channel on YouTube.
The short version is that face-of-Old-Spice Isaiah Mustafa hunkered down in a bunker with a producer, some creatives (and, one suspects, some tremendously good amphetamines) and started banging out YouTube videos directed at individuals all over the world who had taken the time to send him a little message of their own via whatever social channel took their fancy.
This has since been proclaimed one of the greatest social media success stories of all time, which is not without a measure of irony when we consider that it all arose out of a well-conceived and cleverly placed series of good old-fashioned television commercials establishing Mustafa’s persona as the fresh face of a reinvigorated brand.
Either way, it’s proven that even the most prosaic of products can transform its fortunes using the right blend of interruption and permission-based advertising, packed together around a pearl of creativity and a nugget of solid strategic thinking.
This, of course, is disastrous news for brand marketers everywhere. Suddenly the excuse that you work on a crap product most people haven’t heard of in over a decade and certainly couldn’t ever get remotely excited about just isn’t going to cut the Colmans. The guys on the Blue Stratos account must be shitting the bed.
Wieden & Kennedy’s visionary campaign also signals the beginning of the Post-Old-Spice era. Following on from the smattering of ill-advised hangers-on clinging to the coat-tails of the meme itself, we’re moving into the phase where agencies have had time to look on admiringly, schedule a meeting with their client, pitch a similar idea, rush it into production, write the press release and bring it to life.
Orange’s Singing Tweetgrams, I put it to you (and POKE London can consider this an open invitation to tell me what a blithering fool I am, and that this was being planned many moons ago), has the look of one such initiative.
PSFK report that: “From Monday through Thursday of this week, select Tweets tagged with #singingtweetagrams will be recorded into one-off, downloadable Tweetagrams. The recorded Tweetagrams will be posted on The Feed, and selected user submissions will be informed via Twitter if/when musical message is recorded – be it sweet, sultry, witty or snarky.”
Being that I’ve recently eschewed Twitter and the business of writing succinct open missives in favour of the ramling equivalent, I have no way of trying this out in order to see whether it’s a good idea or not.
I do wonder whether part of the charm of Old Spice’s approach was its novelty, and ambition, taking an unproven concept and realising it in a way as emotionally intelligent as it was strategically well-considered. And I’m not sure that’s a format that stands up to imitiation.
Time, we may feel 100% confident, will tell.
October 6th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
The Orange initiative is one of a flurry of campaigns generating personalised messages for their fans. Skype did a similar one back in February, getting artists to respond to messages left by punters. This lovely wood carver even made something for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bRAcJKhG_A
But I think what made the Old Spice campaign different is that the star of the show – the famous face of the brand himself – spoke to people directly. That element of fame adds real sparkle. It’s the digital equivalent of those ‘doorstep challenge’ campaigns where a celeb turns up at an unsuspecting person’s front door with a camera crew.
The Old Spice team did, of course, execute the whole thing with brilliant style, wit and originality and you’re right that it’s a very tough act to try and follow. But could a brand with a similarly iconic spokesperson do something similar?
October 6th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Hey David, thanks for posting. Isn’t the question really *should* a brand with a similarly iconic spokesperson do something similar. I’m not sure it would have the same reach, or generate the same brand equity. Isn’t part of the appeal of a good campaign these days driven by the fact that it offers something new and shiny? I like the doorstep challenge analogy though, that’s exactly what it is, and keys directly back into the oldest trick in the soap-powder-selling book.
The example you give of the Skype activity makes me wonder if there are any other forerunners to the Orange and Old Spice initiatives. Being that I work solely in the entertainment space I’m not really up to speed on the wider world of FMCG marketing and advertising, but I could easily imagine that there are other campaigns out there that have applied the same principles yet failed to find that exact balance that spawns the kind of break-through campaign someone like me gets to hear about.
October 6th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
I expect all the campaigns ‘inspired’ by Old Spice will feel that they’ve made their version sufficiently different for it to have that shiny new feel. It may only be the more savvy/wordly/cynical among us who suspect that it isn’t so original, while the target audience remains completely unaware of the predecessors.
I’d also say that the impulse to imitate a proven success can also come from the client, not just the agency. I’ve been lucky enough to work with clients who have placed great value in being the first to do something – but I’ve also encountered clients who have explicitly stated that they want to mimic an existing successful property because they felt it was a tried and tested formula. It’s not always easy to dissuade them.
Fortunately, most agencies are smart enough to know that differentiating a product in a crowded market depends on originality. I love a talking meerkat as much as the next man, but I wouldn’t advise anyone to go down that route.
And thanks for crediting me with more knowledge of FMCG marketing history than I really have. I’d be interested to hear about other forerunners in this style too.
October 7th, 2010 at 11:57 am
It’s funny, I thought the Orange singing tweetagrams were more akin to http://irkafirka.com than Old Spice, with Orange going down the audio route over the visual…
I see your point though
October 7th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
David – agreed, the picture I painted might just as easily be the client rushing over to their agency and briefing something in. Either way, the danger is that you end up with a rush-job. Not that I’m saying that’s what’s happened here
James – thank you for bringing Irkafirka into my life. The great thing about writing a post like this is luring people who know more than you into opening your eyes to things you didn’t know about. And yes, that does look like a closer fit.
A friend of mine in New York flagged up another example of something – well, someone – she thought should be acknowledged: Kevin Butler, fictional Sony spokesperson, responsible for numerous appearances on behalf of the corporation: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/09/15/sony-kevin-butler-isnt-real-cant-give-interviews/