David Holt discusses what businesses can learn from Procter and Gamble’s enormously successful Old Spice ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ social media campaign.
The statistics from the Old Spice campaign in the US tell the story. P&G was having great success with a new ad campaign promoting Old Spice aftershave, featuring super-cool, American football legend Isaiah Mustafa. The campaign sees Isaiah move seamlessly from his bathroom, to a boat and onto a horse within 40 seconds as he attempts to persuade American men to stop borrowing their partner’s flowery fragrant shower gel and be a proper man by using Old Spice. This advert was aired during the American Superbowl on 7th February 2010. It soon achieved cult status and attracted 15 million views on YouTube.
Then, on the 12th July, the Old Spice Man started to respond to tweets sent to the Old Spice Twitter page. The majority of these tweets were Twitterers saying how they liked the Old Spice advert. Rather than send another tweet, Isaiah responded by posting a specially composed YouTube video recorded from his bathroom wearing just a towel. When Twitterer ‘sjuman28’ tweeted that Isaiah’s towel should be shorter, Isaiah stated in his 30 second YouTube video reply that ‘this was a family programme – anyone could be watching’.
As soon as Twitterers caught on to the fact that the Old Spice Man was responding to tweets through personalised YouTube videos, tweets began to soar – on 13th July he received nearly 62,000 tweets. Celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres and showbiz reporter Perez Hilton tweeted and received personal replies, even companies such as Starbucks tweeted to see if the Old Spice Man needed a hot coffee.
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