Brand Purpose: Old Spice helps young guys navigate the seas of manhood.

Let’s face it. Before Superbowl 2010, no one really knew about Old Spice. Changing young guys’ opinion about Old Spice being cool and relevant, when the word “Old” is in its name was an uphill battle. But the Old Spice brand seriously dominated the industry and is now integrated in today’s culture. So obviously I couldn’t contain my excitement when James Moorehead, Shanan Sabin, Matt Carciera and the rest of P+G dream team came and spoke at BU about how “The man your man could smell like.”

The Beginning

Competition

Whose commercial has hundreds of attractive women running towards one guy? You got it. Axe.

James Moorehead explains that when Axe came in and sold “sex in a bottle” to young guys, the Old Spice brand realized that they couldn’t just sell features anymore. Axe was selling sex and Old Spice needed to revitalize their own brand to stay competitive.

Consumer Insights

There were 2 key insights when it came to the Old Spice potential consumer. A.) The main shoppers were in fact women. B.) Guy’s don’t talk about soap…BUT they are always plugged in and love to share cool content.

So when Dove came out with their very own Men’s Dove Body wash, it confirmed that women mostly purchase soap. Dove had planned to launch during the Superbowl and the Old Spice team had to do something about it.

Creative Brief

The objective was very simple. Steal Dove’s thunder and protect Old Spice’s leadership position in the category. The main selling idea was to play to Old Spice’s brand truth: Smell like a Man.

Media Strategy

  • Focus on the building excitement around the Superbowl.
  • Share Advertisement on FB: Let the FB fans run wild and watch it spread the Thursday before the Superbowl.
  • Search Terms: Once the news spread, people were going to search. Thus, made sure to buy key ad words.

Media: Old Spice Spreads Like Wildfire

The Old Spice brand had a perfect balance between two elements

Paid vs. Earned Advertising

Oprah asking about Mustafa? Amazing earned advertising. But you can’t just hope that a campaign will gain earned advertising. You have to feed it with entertainment.

Push vs. Pull

Like every campaign, traditional media pushes out. But with 200 million views on YouTube, that created an incredible pull. The audience wanted to engage and Old Spice gave it to them.

Result?

Everyone loving this commercial and it spreading like crazy. The commercial didn’t alienate women (main shoppers), was cool enough for the digital young guys to spread to buddies on the internet, was talked about by celebrities that helped increase awareness, provided an venue for the audience to engage in, and stole Dove Men’s body wash thunder. #winning.

In case you want to look at it again and add to the 31,823,748 views, here ya go.