Old Spice owes its new hip, media savvy and sexy brand to ex-football player and actor Isaiah Mustafa. He is the "ridiculously handsome" Old Spice Guy who debuted in a Super Bowl ad this year and who has appeared in some 186 30-second online videos over the past two days. Mustafa, in his character, has been taking questions and responding to posts on Twitter, Facebook, Digg and Reddit - oftentimes from celebrities and reporters but also from ordinary consumers as well via the videos, which were produced at roughly a rate of 7 minutes per video.
His comedic timing and delivery has been flawless; his voice has been made available for voice mail for adoring and admiring fans.
Classic Social Media
Why did this campaign work so well? Beyond Mustafa's skills, it was a classic social media based campaign as marketers envision such campaigns to be: personalized - he addressed the questioners by name - nearly instantaneous, and quite funny. It also was very cheap to produce, Wired magazine reports - another happy attribute for marketers, albeit one that is not discussed as much when the topic of social media marketing comes up.
The Nuts and Bolts
A team of "creatives, tech geeks, marketers and writers" gathered in an undisclosed location in Portland, Oregon to produce the videos, Read Write Web reports. Organized by Old Spice marketing agency Wieden + Kennedy, the group tracked the questions that came after Old Spice solicited them. Iain Tait, Global Interactive Creative Director at Wieden credits the close work between the technical and social media specialists and the creative team. "In the room there are two social media guys and a tech guy who built a system pulling in comments from around the web all together in real time," he told Read Write Web. "We're looking at who's written those comments, what their influence is and what comments have the most potential for helping us create new content. The social media guys and script writers are collaborating to make that call in real time. We have people shooting and we're editing it as it happens. Then the social media guys are looking at how to get that back out around the web…in real time."
Creative Freedom
Tait also gives kudos to Old Spice's parent company Proctor & Gamble by allowing his team to write marketing content in real time, with little to no supervision, Read Write Web added. "They have given us a set of guidelines and if we get close to the edges we contact them."
