I’m sure we've all seen this Old Spice commercial: A ripped looking shirtless man with a towel around his waist and a tongue like an auctioneer stands in a bathroom and addresses the female population “Hello ladies…” and he points out some other members of the audience “Look at your man. Now back to me. Now back at your man. Now back to me…” Now he’s telling you to do all sorts of things “Look down. Back up. Where are you? You’re on a boat…” then before you know what’s happening he’s holding a seashell and transforming a pair of tickets into a cascade of diamonds. Finally the whole thing ends in him sitting astride a horse addressing you on the superior manliness of Old Spice body wash.
Now, if you’re like me at this point you’re probably laughing your head off. You don’t care that someone just wasted 30 seconds of your life trying to sell you something that you probably don’t even want. Because if you’re like me you just buy whatever’s cheap at Costco… or whatever reminds you of that YouTube video that you’re friend sent you that made you laugh for 15 minutes while you watched it over and over again before showing it to your roommate and sending it to everyone else you know. Because if you’re like me you didn’t see this ad on TV, you either get your entertainment straight from the web or you skip through commercials on your DVR. You saw this ad because someone showed it to you. They showed it to you because it was funny. It was funny because it didn’t do what it was meant to do. It didn’t sell Old Spice body wash, it sold the commercial. It wasn’t an ad, it was entertainment, entertainment in which the product was a character.
The result? The commercial went viral. While other advertisers spent millions trying to get people to see their ads on TV, Old Spice was getting millions of hits on YouTube because people wanted to see their ad. They were no longer interrupting people’s entertainment to tell them about their product. They were the entertainment, and the product was the hero.
This is a problem for advertisers. They can’t sell us products anymore; we’re getting too smart for that, what they need to sell us now is entertainment. They need to make us laugh, and they need to make us cry. They need to make us want more, and then they need to make us think that their product will give us that more.
But wait, there’s more! The old spice commercial accomplished one more thing that traditional advertising fails to do. It became part of our culture. People would quote it on their Facebook, Twitter and blogs (think about where you are right now). It wasn’t long before parodies began popping up left and right. My personal favorite was the one by the Harold B Lee library at Brigham Young University. It was even parodied on Sesame Street. Old Spice took advantage of this and launched a Twitter and YouTube based ad campaign in which the actor from this ad, Isaiah Mustafa, created personalized responses to Twitter posts and YouTube comments in real time.
The result? According to Forbes, Old Spice’s body wash sales grew 27% in the first six months after the campaign launched. This commercial alone has received more than 30,000,000 views on YouTube, and people are still talking about it.
So, advertisers, look at your ad, now back to mine, now back at your ad, now back to mine. Sadly, it’s not mine, but if it stopped making people sick and made them laugh instead, it could sell like it’s mine. Look down. Back up. Where are you? You’re on YouTube with the ad your ad could sell like. What’s in your hand? Back at me. I have it. It’s the money you could be making if you made better ads. Look again, the money is now diamonds. Anything is possible when your ad sells like an Old Spice ad and not an infomercial. I’m on a blog.
Old Spice | The Man Your Man Could Smell Like - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE
Parody Video: BYU and the Harold B Lee Library - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ArIj236UHs
Parody Video: Sesame Street - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkd5dJIVjgM
A great article on Forbes.com - http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/06/24/general-broadcasting-amp-entertainment-us-ads-that-work_8534501.html
Another article, similar to the one above, but a lot easier to read -http://mashable.com/2010/07/27/old-spice-sales/
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