Last week Old Spice stormed the internet with a masterfully executed social media marketing campaign. Over the course of two days the marketing minds behind the Old Spice brand posted nearly 200 videos to YouTube. The videos ranged from ten seconds long to just over a minute with most of them in the 30-second range.
That in itself is impressive. But what is really amazing, especially for a 71 year old brand owned by a major corporation like Proctor & Gamble, is that they produced the videos in real-time responding directly to comments made on various social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Their videos have garnered nearly 100 million upload views in the week since making them the most watched YouTube channel for the week. Four of their videos are in the top 20 most popular videos for the week. As of this writing the Old Spice Facebook Page has over 662,000 fans and their Twitter profile has 87,000+ followers.
These are all channels that the brand can now use to communicate with consumers.
By most any measure it was a fantastically successful two days for Old Spice.
Here are some of the social media marketing lessons we can learn from what the Old Spice marketing team did last week.
1. Leverage Existing Content
Old Spice already had a couple of TV commercials that were very popular. They were quirky, with some impressive special effects and appealed to a broad cross section of people. The spots each had several million views on YouTube. Here’s the most recent one:
For their social media campaign Old Spice leveraged the success of those existing ads by maintaining the integrity of the “Old Spice Man” character. They also kept the quirky props consistent.
Lesson 1:
What content does your business have out there that can be used as a spring board to launch a more widespread social media campaign?
2. Personalize It
In tapping into the existing character, they managed to bring him to “life.” People interacted with the character like they were interacting with a real person. Yet they kept things a bit farcical and playful. They addressed all sorts of people by name, whether they were Twitter user names, YouTube commenters, or actual names.
Some examples:
In a fun twist, they even let the character address his actor self:
And he even addressed his daughter:
Lesson 2:
If even a men’s personal care product can find a way to interact with people more personally, what ways can your business do the same thing online?
3. Keep Things Interesting
Old Spice managed to mix things up and keep things interesting with humor. They used obscure references. For example they addressed the 4Chan message board in this video to Anonymous which has well over 800,000 views already:
They poked fun at lawyers.
They pointed out some jobs that involve snorkeling.
They called out silly promises.
They passed along a marriage proposal.
Lesson 3:
How can you break out of any ruts that you find yourself in and make your content more interesting?
4. Engage The Community
Hopefully you’re beginning to see by now that Old Spice made it a point in this campaign to engage the various communities. They didn’t talk at people. Instead they spoke with them.
This is where far too many businesses completely miss the boat when it comes to social media. Far too often we see businesses with a “broadcast” mentality rather than making the effort to engage social media communities.
In contrast, the Old Spice team made the effort to speak with a broad cross section of different types of people. Sure they reached out to celebrities. They’d be foolish not to. For example:
Old Spice Man sent a thank you to Anton Ohno.
He gave medical advice to Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter followers
But they also addressed many other, non-celebrity types by…
Giving hockey advice
Issuing disclaimers
They even made fun of spam robots
Lesson 4:
In what ways can your business address a broader cross section of the social media communities where you are engaged?
5. Have A Team
This campaign wasn’t created by a guy with his Flip Video camera. According to interviews on ReadWriteWeb and Fast Company, the agency behind this campaign had a whole team of people to put this together including writers, video production people and editors.
Most notably they also had some very sharp social media people sifting through comments from the various social media sites, choosing which comments to respond to. And then passing on relevant info to the writers to help them come up with workable scripts for Isaiah Mustafa (the actor) to perform.
Take away any part of their team and the campaign would have likely fallen apart.
When they got to the end of their run, they finished with style.
Lesson 5:
Who can you add to your team to make your business more effective?
All well and good, but did you catch the story that their sales are down?
Heya Jon! I saw where their sales were down after the first ad ran. It’s too early to tell what affect last week’s social media marketing campaign will have on sales yet.
But it is an interesting question. Is there any value to increasing brand awareness if the campaign doesn’t directly drive sales?
It wasn’t a very persuasive story. The story was that “Old Spice’s Red Zone After Hours body wash” were down a bit. The minor question was which periods were being compared, but that paled in comparison to the major point, which is that Old Spice has several varieties of body wash on the market. I myself went out and picked up the “Old Spice High Endurance Fresh body wash,” which wasn’t counted in that story. A study of the entire Old Spice line might tell you something; all this one told us is that far too many media outlets don’t pay attention to the stories they publish.
Can’t say that surprises me. About par for the course, eh?
I thought this was a very informative look at what Old Spice is doing. The breakdown of the 5 lessons is insightful and I bet this will help many. I am still stunned at how many YouTube videos the Old Spice team posted, wow. Happy 2012.
Heya Lynn! Yep. It is amazing what you can do with a plan and a team.
Haha awesome to find all these videos in one place. A seriously brilliant and hilarious campaign. I love that dude.