The introduction of the entertainingly smooth-talking Isaiah Mustafa as the new macho face of Old Spice was an inspired way to revitalise a staid brand, and a deserved winner at this year’s Cannes Lions in the film category. However, in the past couple of weeks, the team at W&K have successfully demonstrated how a great campaign can become a brilliant campaign, with an innovative social media initiative that really brings to life the personality of the character, and underlines the newly-found confidence of the brand.
The 187 personalised real time video responses to messages posted on various social media sites is an unprecedented way to create a sense of intimacy, whilst simultaneously bringing the campaign to a mass audience. Whilst the social tools to achieve this are by no means new, it is the quality and sheer mass of the bespoke content, together with the immediacy of its distribution, that makes the campaign so compelling. The beauty of it is that it is effectively a form of UCG, with users sending in their own ideas for content that should be created - such as this helpful customisable answerphone message.
Apparently the process for creating this mass of content involved having a team of “digital community managers” tracking and posting content, whilst feeding information to three writers. These writers sent scripts to a fourth writer, who directed Mustafa in real time using a teleprompter. Now that a brand has taken the risk of testing this model of content production it will be intriguing to see how other brands adopt the approach to try and connect with customers.
Having seen Old Spice reasserted itself to a new socially-active audience, the real proof of success will of course be whether there is a shift in attitudes to the brand and whether this in turn leads to an uplift in sales. Much as though this campaign has made me reappraise what the Old Spice brand stands for, I can’t help but feel that it will need to be supported by similarly refreshing innovations with the product and its packaging before I consider adding it to my shopping list.
Swan dive.
