How Old Spice won the internet

04 August 2010

Sales Tip  4^th August 2010

How Old Spice Won the Internet

Time to read this section about 60 seconds, time well spent.

 

Most people overseas have been talking about the Old Spice YouTube videos since they launched in February.  These ads are fine examples of how a company can use Social Media to double product sales and not only increase brand awareness but change brand perception from in my case "a product my Dad uses, to a savvy product I should look at next time I'm shopping".

If you haven't seen the commercials, click here to watch them

 

 

 

 

So now you've seen the ad's, how much did they increase Old Spice sales, Nielsen reports an increase in sales of 107%!

It's not the just commercials themselves (from Marketing firm Wieden & Kennedy) that made them go viral on the internet, it was the responses to Twitter tweets on the 14^th July that catapulted both sales, and actor Isaiah Mustafa popularity both on TV and Internet.

 

 

According to Adweek, Old Spice brand videos have now reached over 110 million, "surpassing the reach of traditional broadcast."  This shows the potential what Social Media at this point in time can offer businesses.

The campaign wasn't so much about the commercial, but more about the commercial talking to the audience and interacting with their comments.  A brilliant concept, and certainly one of the most exciting campaigns in a while.  Iain Tait the Global Interactive Creative Director at Wieden, was leading the effort. "In a way there's nothing magical that we've done here," he explained, "We just brought a character to life using the social channels we all [social media geeks] use every day.  But we've also taken a loved character and created new episodic content in real time."

Bravo to Procter & Gamble for showing us how 2 TV adverts, 87 video responses on YouTube, 2 Social Media experts, and 1 good looking male can not only double a product's sales, but re-brand it at the same time.  These ad's will stick around for a while to come yet (well nothing really dies on the internet), however we're very keen to see what comes next from Iain Tait and the team at Wieden & Kennedy.

Hope you enjoyed the videos!

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