This week, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, a.k.a. the Old Spice Man, became the first Social Media superhero. He accomplished this by taking the social web by storm as the star of a viral campaign that churned out clever, cheeky video responses to individuals who had tweeted, blogged, or otherwise referenced the man or the brand. A total of 184 of them over the course of two days. Wow. Game-changing.
With no interference or waiting for approval from the C-levels at Procter and Gamble, Widen + Kennedy, the agency behind the brand, worked with incredible speed; teaming writers, creatives, techies, and marketers in a closed-door session that made it possible for actor Isaiah Mustafa to speak directly to everyone from average Joes and his own daughter to celebrities and the internet elite via video. Though the dust has yet to settle, you can guess at the result: views in the multi-millions, a ridiculous number of new fans and followers, and an orgy of internet love for The Man who equals The Brand.
The revitalization of this classic brand, previously thought of as somewhat crusty and geriatric, is astonishing. The viral campaign mold has been broken and the new mold is shaped like Mustafa’s stellar abs. What’s next for competing brands – or for brands looking to play on this field in general – is anyone’s guess, but the bar just moved up. A lot. To answer the question I posed in the title of this post, that smell is success. And as it turns out, it smells a lot like Old Spice.
Read more about the process involved in the creation of these videos in a great post by ReadWriteWeb.
