Old Spice YouTube Tweetathon

Not in a romantic way, but in a way that I have the utmost respect for your ability to take a concept and run with it as far as you can. Your “guy on a horse” campaign premiered to fantastic reviews a few months back, and now you’ve done it again with a one-take masterpiece that once again features the swarthy and muscley Isaiah Mustafah (aka “the man your man could smell like”), and I am as impressed now as I was when I saw the first spot. Nay, I am MORE impressed with this spot.

This was an eventful week for brands in social media. Personalities representing brands were in the spotlight for entertaining us in Social Media Marketing and helping us in Social Media Servicing. The Old Spice campaign delivered on the brand promise through the well integrated creative, social and marketing teams to create, listen and respond to both social celebrities, influencers and the masses.

A team of creatives, tech geeks, marketers and writers gathered in an undisclosed location in Portland, Oregon yesterday and produced 87 short comedic YouTube videos about Old Spice. In real time. They leveraged Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and blogs. They dared to touch the wild beasts of 4chan and they lived to tell the tale. Even 4chan loved it. Everybody loved it; those videos and 74 more made so far today have now been viewed more than 4 million times and counting. The team worked for 11 hours yesterday to make 87 short videos, that's just over 7 minutes per video, not accounting for any breaks taken. Then they woke up this morning and they are still making more videos right now. Here's how it's going down.

There's some really effective things that made the Old Spice campaign possibly one of the best Social Media campaigns to grace the Internet. There's four things that they did really and well and four things that we can all apply into our own Social Media.

Advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy have set a standard marketing experts will admire and follow in the years to come. This is the future of marketing. Everything was run perfectly. The team behind the campaign took great care to engage celebrities, influencers, common folk and popular social media sites in balanced quantities. And it knew exactly how to talk to them.

Old Spice Dude, bring your anorexic bod to Silicon Valley, and we’ll see who can cause, and who can stop, body odor. By the way, I love what Jenny Craig did for you.

Using creative videos, Old Spice aggressively markets to women shower gel made for men. But will real men abandon bar soap for body wash? In less than three days, the 65 response videos drew more than 5.2 million views on YouTube. Old Spice spent $7.5 million advertising body wash in 2009, well under the $30 million spent by Axe body wash, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP.

I just made #KTLA News with my proposal... What a Trip @OldSpice

On Twitter, @Jsbeals wrote "@OldSpice Can U Ask my girlfriend to marry me? Her name is Angela A. Hutt-Chamberlin #Johannes S. #Beals". One response that encapsulates the Synthaptic aspects of this campaign began with the user @Jsbeals asking @OldSpice to make a marriage proposal on his behalf.

Lessons for companies and agencies over the Old Spice Campaign: If you hire people, trust them to get on with it. If all these scripts had needed traditional approval, it would have ground to a halt; React quickly. Old Spice is now the benchmark and there will be more like it in future; Content is a winner, personalised content is the absolute winner.

if true social media interaction and engagement is an ongoing process, then someone needs to be continuing the chat with the hundreds of thousands of people who are now following the brand on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and elsewhere. Otherwise it’s been a one-off – a very personalised one-off, but still a one-off – stunt.

Lessons on being a man (and a shirtless media sensation) from the Old Spice man.

At the tail-end of a long, very long, 90-minute earnings call in which I dozed off at least three times, Google CFO Patrick Pichette perked me up when he made a reference to the Old Spice social media marketing campaign. “It just gives you a glimpse of where the world is going,” he said with a touch of awe in his voice.

First, here’s the basics: Number of videos made: 180+; Number of video views: 5.9 million; Number of comments: 22,500And that’s since Tuesday.

Old Spice followed it with The Return of The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, which premiered just a couple weeks ago and has already reached an impressive 6.9 million views. In all, Old Spice has been red hot in online video of late, taking four of the ten spots on the Top 10 Viral Video Ads Chart this week.

If you want to find out more about the team who've managed to write nearly 200 ads in 48 hours - they're mostly listed here: http://www.canneslions.com/work/film/ - and if you want to see and hear 2 of them, there's an interview with Eric and Craig on YouTube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDk9jjdiXJQ (link kindly supplied by Mr Douche-Caller).

World Vision Australia's Tim Costello performs a parody with purpose. Swan dive in to http://www.worldvision.com.au

Why did you choose to respond to Twitter tweets using video and why employ YouTube versus a dedicated Old Spice site? By locking the campaign into any proprietary place would have just severely limited the exposure it would get and diminish it. This whole idea of responding to people and being very smart about who we decided to respond to, and in what manner, that wouldn't have worked if we hadn't done it in a format like YouTube where we are able to embed it.

The 30-second spot ran for the first time July 7 on national TV. I don't know how many people saw it there, but the spot has been viewed 5.5 million times on YouTube. Mustafa has made a whole batch of Your Tube spots that have been view an addition 6 million times. Many of the spots are in response to comments left to him on his Facebook account or Twitter where he has about 45,000 followers.

The Old Spice guy is a fake! He is not a man that women want. Women want a real man! Women want me, because I'm a real man! I choose Dove and so should you!

Each episodic response illustrates the flattening of traditional entertainment factors. The campaign realigns passive entertainment construction and distanced absorption via real-time Immediation and Regenerative Comprehension. The Old Spice Guy Synthaptic threading is currently ongoing with replies continually being posted via Youtube.

Until next time my internet friends.

On the Internet, Haley wrote: "hayley mustafa writes, why do you look so much like my dad? " (The second last video is a belter when the daughter of the actor playing Old Spice Man gets in touch.)

The last few weeks saw two attempts to game the messy business that is social media influence: one by forward-thinking business magazine, Fast Company, and the other by a venerable packaged goods manufacturer, Proctor & Gamble. As a regular reader and fan of Fast Company, it's clear that the magazine should have the upper hand in this. Unfortunately, its Influence Project comes across as literal, artificial, and self-serving. P&G's Old Spice commercial, other hand, seems certain to become a landmark in interactive advertising. All because the Old Spice Guy brought the funny.

Dearest Anonymous, I gladly accept your nomination and hope my reign as your 147th king will be long and full of win! Thank you for your continued support!

On Twitter, guykawasaki wrote "Old Spice dude replies on Twitter with personalized videos http://idek.net/2pAw"

When Old Spice is mentioned it is practically synonymous with that stuff you bought your dad on Fathers’ Day. A traditional, old-fashioned, classic eau de cologne. A stagnant brand, relegated to the nostalgic shelf.

The genius behind the Old Spice Man social media marketing campaign is Procter & Gamble ad agency Weiden + Kennedy, based out of Portland, Ore. Weiden + Kennedy apparently have a firm grasp on how to embrace social networking to engage customers, rather than simply using social networks as another platform for the same, tired marketing customers are already exposed to everywhere else.

On the Internet, Gabe wrote "Don Draper Really Nailed These Old Spice Ads"

Look, I’m an adult who has been to college (jealous?) who understands the ways in which advertising manipulates human insecurities and/or wish fulfillment in an attempt to convince over-active consumers to spend their money on terrible products they do not need. Moreover, I am not in the market for ANY kind of bodywash because soap will do just fine, thank you very much, and if I was going to subscribe to an Axe-brand lifestyle choice, I would just buy actual Axe-brand products. But these Old Spice ads are (still) so charming!

On Twitter, huffingtonpost wrote "Old Spice Guy Makes Hilarious Personalized Videos For Fans http://huff.to/bYORn6 "

On Twitter, @Gizmodo wrote "@OldSpice Gadget-lovers need to know: will anything surpass the loofah as the predominant body wash-applying technology?"

Alyssa Milano - Alyssa Milano sends messages to Mr. Old Spice in new Alyssa Milano vid. Alyssa asks the Old Spice guy to donate $100,000 to the National Wildlife Federation Gulf Oils Spill Relief Fund. Nice gesture by Alyssa Millano.

On Twitter, Alyssa_Milano wrote "Are you flirting with me, @oldspice guy...

On Twitter, JustineBateman wrote "Can the Old Spice guy do ads for ALL the world's products?! Customized responses now. http://tinyurl.com/32yy54z"

On the Internet, Rose wrote "How many teeth do sharks have?" - http://answers.yahoo.com/question/ind... "

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Sharks may have up to 3,000 teeth at one time. The teeth are arranged in rows and when one tooth is damaged or lost, it is replaced by another. Their teeth are constantly replenished and have unlimited rows of teeth to replace others (they are polydonts). Most sharks have about 5 rows of teeth at any time.

For instance, P&G picked up the Film Grand Prix this year for Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" spot from Wieden + Kennedy. Launched in February, it's racked up nearly 12.2 million YouTube views. But in the 52 weeks ended June 13, sales of the featured product, Red Zone After Hours Body Wash, have dropped 7 percent, per SymphonyIRI (this excludes those sold at Walmart). P&G execs were not available to comment.

On Twitter, @kevinrose wrote "i'm considering buying old spice body wash just so they keep making these epic commercials

The responses are often hilarious. (“My concern is that if I did ads for all the world’s products, it would cause global prosperity”). And they are certainly highly targeted. And it also just redefined the model for Promoted Trends. Old Spice is a promoted Trend, which takes you to the Old Spice Twitter account highlighting these videos as individual responses addressing each Twitter user who gets their own Old Spice commercial.

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