The Procter & Gamble (PG) ad campaign of Old Spice guy Isaiah Mustafa came out smelling like a rose .
Tens of millions of people watched a series of ads on YouTube of a bare-chested Mustafa extolling the benefits of Old Spice Body Wash. Launched in February on TV and the Internet, the campaign brought an Emmy award for the ad campaign's creator, Wieden+Kennedy. It also brought TV show appearances for Mustafa.
"It will go down in the pantheon of great ad campaigns," said Matt Cutler, chief marketing officer of research firm Visible Measures. "It really drove home the idea that we're not in Kansas anymore."
Where we are is in the Internet era, where videos can so quickly go "viral." That is, access to the message quickly multiplies.
The Old Spice video campaign's third phase, called "Responses," attracted 5.9 million YouTube views on the first day alone, as friends forwarded the link to Facebook friends, who tweeted the link on their Twitter accounts to followers who e-mailed the piece to their contacts. The three phases in all have attracted 102 million views to date.
And the message struck viewers. In the first six months of the campaign, Old Spice Body Wash sales rose 27% from the year-earlier period, according to Wieden+Kennedy. For the four weeks ended July 11, as the campaign was in full swing on the Web, sales more than doubled from the year-earlier period, according to SymphonyIRI.
The Old Spice campaign, which started with "The Man Your Man Can Smell Like," is an example of viral marketing. It used Web sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to quickly spread the video.
A video ad is informally considered a "viral" hit when it gets at least 1 million views. Big winners get 20-million-plus.
"We're seeing a massive increase among brand advertisers who want to use viral marketing to get in front of a large audience for a modest price," Cutler said.
Easier said than done. Nine out of 10 viral marketing campaigns flop, says Patrick Spenner, managing director of the Marketing Leadership Council.
The trade group studied 300 social media campaigns to see how they boosted brand sales.
"You'd be surprised how low the scores are," Spenner said. "Nine out of 10 do not see business results, or maybe it's driving some business but they don't know it."
Successful ad campaigns, regardless of venue, face challenges. These include how rivals respond, product pricing and availability, and the ability to come up with content that resonates with a distracted, fickle audience.
By BRIAN DEAGON, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY September 3, 2010
