Old Spice Campaigns that Reshaped its Brand Image

Old spice is one of the best American brands of grooming products. It has been up and running for almost 75 years. After its acquisition by proctor & gamble, they have focused on changing its image in the minds of customers using humor.

Since its conception, they have focused on targeting the males demographic that use grooming products. P&G set out to change the focused demographic of the older generation of men. They wanted to expand their target audience and make the younger audiences keen to buy old spice. They wanted to go from ‘a brand for your grandfather’ to ‘a brand for you’. To achieve this, they rebranded their whole brand image to appeal to more audiences. In addition, rebranding their company to appeal to a younger audience, they used social media to do so. As a result, Old Spice became one of the first brands to use social media so extensively. In addition to this, they launched a string of successful and viral marketing campaigns.

Man your man could smell like Campaign

The primary objective of this campaign was to revamp the image of Old Spice. In order to do that P&G decided they need to focus on appealing to a younger audience. Their target market now became males between the ages of 13 and 34.

They decided that women have to be the focal point of their campaigns since they bought products for the males in their homes. This was because according to their research women were the linchpin between their sales and their target audience since they did the shopping. This was the pivotal rationale behind the ‘man your man could smell like’ campaign. The campaign was launched with ads featuring 'the old spice guy'. Isaiah Mustafa became the best choice for the company because they were actually targeting women and telling them that your man could also smell like this if he uses old spice. They were now focusing on the emotional thinking of consumers rather than rational.

The ads were quirky, weird and the most unique ads of that time. This was because instead of indirectly promoting their brands they showed Isaiah Mustafa reciting monologues directly to the viewers while doing extraordinary activities. And because they were targeting women, Isaiah was seen shirtless talking directly to the women telling them about the benefits of using old spice. They style of the ad, the script, message to the video was distinct. It was nothing like what people had seen before which grabbed widespread attention. The idiosyncrasy of the commercials and efforts of P&G were widely appreciated. They received their industry’s highest honor, the Cannes Lions Film Grand Prix in 2010 and was also nominated for an Emmy. Within 3 months of the launch of this campaign, the sales boosted to 107%. The logical for the brand was to make encore commercials but that wasn’t sufficient for what old spice was trying to achieve. They wanted to be the most interactive brand and they wanted their customers to be felt heard. This was the rationale for their next campaign.

The video response campaign

Riding the viral wave of the smell like a man campaign and the unequivocal love received by the old spice guy they came up with a new campaign. This was an extension to the previous campaign and was alternatively named ‘the return of the man your man could smell like’ campaign. This was purely a social media campaign. Their goal was to increase the online traffic of their website, Twitter and Facebook accounts and YouTube channel. Old spice wanted their customers to be engaged with the brand on a more personal and intimate level. How the campaign worked was that they invited the customers to submit questions on Twitter and Facebook that they want the old spice guy to answer personally. Within 2 days of this invitation, there were over 2000 submissions by people. The answers to these questions were made in the form of personalized videos posted on YouTube. Over 180 personalized videos were uploaded. These all included quirky and truly old spice type responses.

Re: @JustineBateman

Re:@Everyone

Their YouTube channel became one of the most popular sponsored channels with more than 100 million followers. The videos received more views in the first day than Barrack Obama’s 2008 victory speech and surpassed many other viral videos. It became the fastest growing online campaigns of all time. The number of videos posted, the amount of personalization and the quick response was termed as an unprecedented move by any brand at that time.

Fabio vs the old spice guy

This objective of this campaign was clear. The brand wanted to maintain the humor and eccentricity that made the old campaigns so sought after. In addition to this, they wanted to maintain the online site traffic and customer engagement without doing the same thing. The big idea of the campaign was that Fabio was jealous of the old spice guy’s recognition and wanted to challenge him for the acclaimed throne. This campaign started with Fabio releasing an ad with no explanation.

After this Fabio released his ‘Mano a manor in el bano’ ad challenging the old spice guy to a duel.

Mustafa accepted this challenge through a video.

This led to a three-day‘ duel of videos’ between the two hunks. Both of them posted almost 150 videos over this period. Since the brand did not have any specific idea of how they want the campaign to go, they turned to fans, they asked fans for suggestions of how the duel should end, what should Fabio and spice guy do and votes for the thrones of the old spice guy. One fan suggested that Mustafa should build a time machine to prevent Fabio from taking his place and that’s in fact how the duel actually ended. Following its forerunner’s steps, this campaign also gained over 22 million views in a week. It also became the first channel to hold number 1 and 4 spots for the most viewed channel on YouTube.

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