MEDIA & MARKETING:Having tried to revive the brand for 20 years, Procter & Gamble seems finally to have succeeded
OLD SPICE used to be the gift pack you bought your dad at Christmas when you were a kid and couldn’t think of anything else. And if your father didn’t like it, he could always pass it on to your grateful granddad.
For many Irish men growing up in Ireland in the 1960s, Old Spice was the ultimate in sophistication. The brand dates back to before the second World War but it wasn't until the 1950s that it arrived on Irish shores. In the 1960s, the brand was huge, thanks to television commercials featuring a surfer riding the waves, set against the dramatic music of Carl Orff's O Fortunafrom Carmina Burana.
Fast-forward to 2010 and the dashing sailors and glamorous surfers have been replaced a very handsome, half-naked football player named Isaiah Mustafa, in a series of tongue-in-cheek ads that have become an internet sensation, with nearly 17 million views on YouTube.
In the new ads, which haven’t aired on television at all, Mustafa asks women: “Does your man look like me? No. Can he smell like me? Yes.” Old Spice Guy has gone from being the old guy to the hottest guy on the planet.
Consumer products giant Procter & Gamble bought the Old Spice brand 20 years ago and has been trying to resurrect it ever since.
In the US, the brand has been revitalised in recent years by brand extensions called “Red Zone” and “High Endurance” and by trendy marketing targeting a younger audience. In Ireland and the UK, new deodorant and body spray product lines have also been added.
But nothing has changed the fortunes of the brand on a global scale quite so dramatically as the Mustafa ads. The internet is buzzing with commentators calling the campaign the best use of social media ever.
But why is Procter & Gamble so keen to rescue Old Spice? Why not start from scratch and invest their money in a completely new brand that has no baggage?
Procter & Gamble’s Michael Norton explains: “In the past few years, there has been an increased focus of manly scent-based products that still deliver the performance benefits. In the US, Old Spice is the number one brand of bodywash and deodorant in sales and volume, and the Old Spice heritage is a strength of the brand. “Old Spice has a clear position with consumers. The brand is seen as an authoritative, experienced men’s brand. We articulate the voice of experience through humour. It’s our goal to engage our consumers in a way that’s not only entertaining, but also relevant, humorous and in the Old Spice tone.”
In one of the 30-second internet ads created by the ad agency, Wieden + Kennedy, Mustafa strolls from the bathroom to the deck of a boat before finishing up the ad on the back of a horse.
In another execution, in one continuous shot he goes from a dock to rolling on a log, to walking on water, to strolling through a kitchen with an iced cake, saying: “Do you want to be with a man who smells like he can bake a cake in the dream kitchen he bought for you with his own hands?”
To promote the campaign, Procter & Gamble has Mustafa posting near real-time video vignettes responding to Twitter and Facebook queries, all in character, standing bare-chested in a bathroom set with the ad agency’s copywriters behind the camera writing the jokes. In two days, the agency produced more than 180 videos including exchanges with celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres and Demi Moore.
The internet ads were originally developed for the US market, where more than half of the bodywash purchases are made by women.
Making the brand cool and relevant again is working with American consumers. Sales of Old Spice body wash products have increased by half in the past three months.
Norton won’t say whether there will be an attempt to replicate the transformation of Old Spice’s American fortunes in other countries but says Procter & Gamble is working on plans for the entire Old Spice line of products.
