Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past month (and I don’t mean to discriminate against rock-dwellers, they have rights too) then you’ve no doubt heard of, if not seen the Old Spice Man: A washboard-ab’d man’s man who’s outrageous lifestyle is the premise behind the new Old Spice marketing campaign.
What makes these commercials so successful, I think, is that they’re hilarious, pretty clever, and just absolutely outrageous.
It’s obvious that Old Spice is going through a complete rebranding but perhaps the less obvious thing is that whoever they’ve got at the wheel is a complete genius. This is marketing for the 21st century. Their rebrand, “Smell like a man, man,” has become a complete Internet sensation. Their YouTube channel is getting a bazillion hits from people wanting to watch their hilarious TV spots and, what’s more, they’re pumping out new content daily online. They’re skipping the networks, skipping the distribution and putting it right online, for free, all by themselves giving people what they want which is, ironically, instant access to their commercials… and we’re eating them up!
They’ve gone even one step further by launching a new series, yesterday, of the Old Spice Man responding to messages from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites. He has even gotten into a back-and-forth with Alyssa Milano culminating in him sending actual flowers to her house. We’ll have to wait and see if the Old Spice Man wishes to continue their relationship—only possible if he next donates $100,000 to the Gulf Oil Spill clean up, according to Milano.
But the kicker is that we will wait and see what happens next… this is an ad campaign that’s actually grabbed our interest and kept us entertained. Rarely, would a person go out of their way to watch ads, but Old Spice has got us doing exactly that. If anyone was wondering how to make money in a modern society where people skip the TV networks, download programs themselves, and watch ad-free television on their computers, I think Old Spice has hit upon the formula, and it’s pretty common sense actually, make ads that are entertaining.
