The Old Spice campaign is clever but it's not viral!
The third installation of Old Spice's ads featuring the impossibly charismatic Isaiah Mustafa was a little unexpected. Isaiah and the creative team have been rather busy of late - listening, researching and responding in very personal and meaningful ways to people who have mentioned the first two ads across all types of media. Currently I count 118 video responses on the YouTube channel - to people ranging from Ellen DeGeneres (33,000 views) to Perez Hilton (61,700) to Kevin Rose (61,600) to dozens of every day people who average 300 views. Note: these numbers tripled in the 2 hours since I started this post.
If you look at the total channel video views, it's an impressive 55 Million - particularly because there was nothing passive about their consumption.
This phenomenon is often labeled viral but this is a fundamentally flawed way of understanding it. By definition, a viral video would have to have an in built replication mechanism - one that forced its way into the attention of all your friends. Individuals decide whether to pass on content based on how they believe it will effect the relationships with the recipients - most people don't spam their friends. As Bud Caddell points out, better word for this is popular - the original ads had broad popular appeal and these new responses have a much narrower appeal but much deeper meaning.
Here's an example of how well researched and thoughful the responses are. Kevin Rose recently shared he was sick on twitter.
I applaud the agency Wieden + Kennedy for convincing their client to spend more of its marketing budget on genuinely connecting with and rewarding people who want to be involved in the campaign - its fans.
At the end of the day though - will I switch to Old Spice? Very unlikely but then again, I'm not the target market. Looking forward to seeing the sales figures - I'm willing to bet they're pretty good.
