Old Spice Goes Viral

Everyone has seen this Old Spice commercial with Isaiah Mustafa. The man who walks through a continually changing set, emanating everything that is perceived to be manly while using Old Spice Body Wash. This commercial spawned from the popularity of the loved Super Bowl Old Spice Ad “I’m on a horse!” Upon seeing these commercials, I immediately went to Youtube.com to share them with everyone I knew. Apparently, I’m not the only one who loves these commercials, as the videos have received over 21 million hits. This Old Spice campaign reached a ton of consumers, simply because it was hysterically clever. These commercials even began to create an enormous buzz on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Old Spice decided to use this to their advantage.

Since this is one of my favorite commercials, I tend to continue to share it with people who have not seen it. While searching for it one day, I found that there were many other, newer videos portraying “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” speaking in a bathroom. The titles indicated that it was a reply to a Twitter account. Old Spice had taken the popularity of its Isaiah Mustafa campaigns to the next level and began a viral marketing campaign, in which they directly connect with the consumers that are speaking about their brand. The responses are all short (about 30 seconds in length) and are directly connected to the tweets they are responding to. Isaiah Mustafa repeats what the consumer wrote on their Twitter account and responds in his usually absurd manner. I believe this to be a genius idea, as they are now fully engaged with their potential consumers who have obviously shown an interest in their product. Once again, Old Spice went even further than this.



Not only consumers were tweeting about Isaiah Mustafa and the Old Spice commercials. Celebrities also seemed to love this type of hysterical humor. Whether they were paid to advertise is irrelevant, because Old Spice took advantage of it. They immediately responded to these celebrity tweets with personalized videos, just like they had done with their consumers. They aimed at celebrities and organizations who have many followers on Facebook. The ones I have highlighted were those sent to Demi Moore and the Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks.





This viral campaign created by Old Spice, in my mind, was an amazingly creative and smart decision. They have now reached their consumers on a completely different level, one where the brand is fully engaged with the consumer who is interested in them. And on top of that, they are all hysterically funny.