Old Spice, New Spice, and a great copycat
Posted on 17. Jul, 2010 by neilcrump in Communications, Health, News, Web 2.0
One of the most popular viral campaigns to date is weaving its magic all over the internet. It sparked conversation at the #hcsmeu tweet-up yesterday and followed up a discussion about healthcare communications and viral campaigns that the group had a few weeks ago (which I wrote up in this blog post).
The campaign du jour is for the men’s fragrance Old Spice – yes, Old Spice. Now for the under 3o year old reader you might have no idea what that brand was in the past. It is now a very cool brand, but when I was young (in the 70s) it was the smelly that your grandfather and father might wear for very special occasions like a wedding or an anniversary (metrosexual man did not exist back them). You would buy it for them at Christmas – it was a staple and it sat on the shelf in the bathroom, untouched gathering dust for most of the year.
So check out the core US TV advert from Old Spice (an adaptation of this campaign is running in the UK)…
The engagement piece to the campaign on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter meant that new videos were created in response to people’s questions and comments. Here is the finale video in the series…
It is an excellent campaign (see all the videos on the YouTube channel) which will only increase in popularity and I am sure drive sales. For some analysis and to see how this campaign unfolded see what Mashable have to say.
Harking back to my childhood memories of Old Spice it is clear that it still draws on the essence of the brand: being hyper manly and therefore extremely attractive to the opposite sex. With this new ad campaign they didn’t lose that essence, that core proposition – they just updated it and made it very ‘now’. It was really important that they kept the brand essence – if the brand had become something totally different then I would not have trusted it as it is now. Here is an old 70s advert for Old Spice, the ‘essence’ is still there…
So with mimicry being the greatest form of flattery a host of copycat videos are spawned. Here is one I stumbled across courtesy of a flag from @pfanderson. It is really well done and makes studying and libraries instantly sexy…
So here is my Aurora Five on what we learn for healthcare communications…
- Great content is number one
- People like to be listened to – a tangible expression of that listening like these videos is a great idea
- Acknowledging people by name really nails that you have listened
- Draw on your heritage and what you have done in the past – you might find some gems
- You can plot and plan to ‘go viral’ but you cannot make something go viral – it isn’t down to you!
So what healthcare campaigns have you liked with a strong viral element?
Andrew Spong
19. Jul, 2010
How good is that library spoof? Fantastic! Thanks for the share, #hcsmeu pimping, and sign-off learnings, Neil.
Neil Crump
27. Jul, 2010
There has been a lot of chat about whether the Old Spice campaign is going to deliver on the bottom line. Click on the Mashable link above which is linking to the latest ROI assessment. Here is a link to an extremely critical assessment: http://shamable.com/2010/07/old-spice-social-media-buzz-doesnt-equal-sales/. Worth a read for the other end of the spectrum. Still think it is a super campaign though.