Old Spice "Smell Like A Man, Man": Cross Media Analysis

Description:

In 2010, Old Spice took the world by storm and created an unparalleled media campaign that was able to both revitalise and refresh the brand. This campaign was created in order to combat a big problem; Old Spice was losing its market share to other prominent hygiene brands (such as Dove and Nivea) and had come to be seen as a brand for ‘old people’ (which resulted the marketing phrase: “If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t have been born”). The brand has lost its edge.

After conducting qualitative market research in 2009 in order to better understand their audience, Old Spice found that not only was body wash seen as ‘unmanly’, but a large portion of the body wash being purchased, was actually bought by women (Tank, Kucharski, 2014). Old Spice had to consider how to market to a younger audience (18-35 year old) of both men and women, and somehow make the concept for a body wash commercial entertaining, relevant and “manly”.

Old Spice did a complete overhaul of their branding, including their packaging and advertising, and the face of their campaign. They hired a prominent ad agency called Wieden + Kennedy (W+K) to help them bring both experience and creativity to their new campaign. (Rowe, 2012)

Old Spice’s thoughts were that because they have been around for a long time and in doing so had the knowledge on what masculinity was as Jess Monsey (Account Director for W+K) said:

“With its 70-year brand heritage Old Spice was ‘experienced’ and well positioned to be an expert on masculinity and being a man.” (Case Study: Old Spice Response Campaign, 2016)

From this idea, they came up with a campaign called “Smell like a man, man” which skyrocketed the brand to new heights and also had all their products fly off the shelf.

The new face of Old Spice needed to help them create their new younger and manlier persona – and actor/former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa was perfect for the job. With the good-looking, confident and humorous Mustafa on board, Old Spice (with the help of W+K) filmed their first new commercial in early 2010, hoping to create the new campaign in time for the 2010 Superbowl (Tank, Kucharski, 2014). The one-shot commercial featuring a shirtless Mustafa addressing the ladies in the audience created the picture of paradise and presented the idea that “anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady”. With its great visuals, witty humour and borderline ridiculousness, the first ad (“The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”) became a viral hit within days of its release on TV and social media, and managed to revive a brand that was slowly becoming old and irrelevant.

Storytelling:

The storytelling aspects of the “Smell Like a Man, Man” campaign involve creating a laughably hyperbolic character to feature as a common theme throughout the campaign, rather than presenting a plot to continue over various mediums. From the initial release of the ad “the Man Your Man Could Smell Like”, it was clear that the humour style along with Mustafa’s character had been well received by the target audience. But to ingrain the brand in the forefront of their customers’ minds, the marketers used transmedia storytelling strategies to orchestrate a shared experience for the audience that would prove to be one of the most successful multi-platform advertising campaigns to date. According to Kamal Sinclair, the co-director of the Sundance Institute New Frontier Story Lab, “There’s a huge hunger for participating in storytelling” (Zeiser, 2015), which was recognised by Old Spice in their creation of the “Response Campaign”.

The Response Campaign allowed for the audience to actually interact with Mustafa’s character, bringing both his character development and the consumer involvement to a whole new level, which are both key ideas of successful cross media storytelling. In a brand advertising context, intricate plot weaving and development over time is not necessarily the best way to engage an audience, unlike other storytelling mediums. Instead, the writers provided many windows into a singular story world, featuring the same character, same humour, and same themes each time, without having to consider continuity.

Though seemingly simple, the storytelling devices in the “Smell Like a Man, Man” campaign were brilliantly implemented to make the advertisements widely accessible to the brand’s target audience (as the ideas translated easily over several mediums), to bypass the need for “continuation signifiers” or “content bridges” (as new viewers could jump in at any point and be as included in the conversation and experience as anyone else), to generate a huge amount of earned media, and to cement their progress in reshaping the product as the leading brand for men’s body wash.

Platforms:

The “Smell Like a Man, Man” campaign crossed over multiple platforms cleverly and selectively to hold their target audience captivated. Old Spice rode the high of the release of the initial advertisement by continuously releasing fresh content over a variety of platforms relevant to the demographic. To ensure all bases were reminding potential customers of the Old Spice name, new content was made for each channel, covering television, social media, YouTube, and even stationary print and web format.

Old Spice revamped their social media pages (Facebook, Twitter) and website in order to match the new content being released in the campaign. While “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” as had originally been intended to feature during the 2010 Super Bowl, Old Spice elected to pull out at the last minute and instead play the new ad the following day. In addition to this, the ad was released on the Old Spice YouTube page several days before its scheduled TV release in order to create an early following online. The video went viral due to cunning use of tags and sponsoring search engines to subvert Super Bowl commercial traffic.

In the weeks and months following the release of “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”, another six short videos were released and posted online for all to watch and share (Tank and Kucharski, 2014). Each video, filmed in a similar style to the first, included ridiculous props and scenes, humorous lines, and the “Old Spice guy” doing “manly” (or absurd) activities such as (the now iconic) horse-riding (Old Spice, 2010). With each new ad released, Old Spice’s online following (primarily over Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) increased exponentially; each ad following the same theme as the last and corresponding print ads being released regularly.

Print Ads

Original Ad as well as More Print Ads

Old Spice spread their media over a strategic combination of different platforms to generate, encourage, and maintain positive attention from their target demographic to reposition their brand at the forefront men’s body wash.

Audience:

The challenge of this campaign was evolving the brand image to be relevant to a more sustainable, modern audience, appealing to the 18-35 age-range. Their approach was revolutionary in its marketing strategy due to the fact that it was advertising to both men and women at the same time. (Case Study: Old Spice Response Campaign, 2016)

Anne Zeiser’s book; Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media suggests that to have effective audience engagement you need to:

“Start with a small ‘ask’ like joining a group or following on a social network and then bump up your asks and rewards to engage audiences more deeply until you’ve got a bigger following. Over time, your superfans will become your best ambassadors, spreading your message and sharing your content.” (Zeiser, 2015)

Old Spice noted an existing behaviour of people commenting on their videos and encouraged the brand discussion and attention by providing reward for small ask through the “Response Campaign”. By allowing the audience to directly influence the content being produced, they deepened the personalisation of the campaign and massively increased audience interest. The response videos even attracted publicity from celebrity involvement, such as requests from Ellen Degeneres, Alyssa Milano, Rose McGowan, Huffington Post, etc. By selectively producing the response videos as the main attraction to newcomers in the conversation, Old Spice was cleverly able to manipulate the audience discussion to their advantage.

Old Spice Response Campaign Case Study

Analysis:

The story told in Old Spice’s “Smell Like a Man, Man” campaign, was not told traditionally. While their continual use of Isaiah and the recurring style and themes, witty humor and “manliness” in each new video helped connect each new episode in the campaign, there was no definable story as such.  However, Henry Jenkins sees transmedia storytelling in a slightly different way:

“...a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.” (Jenkins, 2007)

If we use this definition of transmedia storytelling, we can see, by looking at the videos, that there is in fact a continuous and related story being told throughout the campaign. While each as is complete in itself, they are all clearly extensions of the original “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” video, and each addition to the story creates the opportunity to widen their audience and encourage viewers to dig deeper into the campaign; whether it is through Old Spice’s social media (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook), print ads, TV commercials or viewing the products in store or online. The fact that the campaign is so widespread and easily accessible was critical to its overall success. Through having so many different entry points across media platforms, it provided different entry points for different audience segments.

Old Spice’s campaign increased its audience following by tremendous amounts:

• Twitter followers increased by 2700 percent,
• Facebook fan interactions went up by 800 percent,
• Facebook fans increased from 500,000 to 800,000,
• Oldspice.com traffic increased by 300 percent
• YouTube subscribers for the brand increased from 65,000 to 150, 000
• And Old Spice became the number 1 All-Time Most Viewed and number 2 Most Subscribed Brand

All of this happened within one month of the campaign being released and from January to March of 2010, 76% of online conversations of men’s body wash were about Old Spice. (Tank and Kucharski, 2014)

This campaign was ultimately such a successful application of transmedia marketing tactics that it not only exceeded their own goals of reshaping their brand, but it revolutionised the way brands communicate with their consumers. The case is still regarded today as one of the leading cross media advertising success stories.

References

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Henry Jenkins, “Searching for the Origami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling” in Convergence Culture  (New York: New York University Press, 2006) 93-130.

Henry Jenkins, “The Revenge of the Origami Unicorn” (December 2009) Part 1: http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.html Part 2: http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/revenge_of_the_origami_unicorn.html

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