In the 24 hours after the launch of the “live video tweeting” campaign from the OldSpice and Widen + Kennedy team, I heard from nearly every Social Media Expert I know about how wonderful and clever the campaign was. The internet was buzzing for the latest new thing. It was cute, I’ll admit that, but something that caused me to cringe was an email I got from someone that said something like this, “Check out this social media campaign and how easy and cheap it was to execute!” Hold on a second, Tiger. Not so fast!
Anyone who has ever worked with an advertising, PR or social media agency (note: I’m an agency guy) knows that this campaign/stunt was not cheap. I guarantee it took countless hours of planning, strategy, writing and researching before they even started filming the first second of digital footage. I would imagine that this campaign cost at least $100,000 to produce. Most likely in the half-million dollar range. It’s unfortunate, but sometimes the most groundbreaking campaigns aren’t always the most profitable … for the client, at least.
Despite Enormous Popularity, Old Spice Guy Not Helping Sales – Yahoo! TV Blog.
Isaiah Mustafa — the actor portraying the now-ubiquitous “Old Spice Guy” — and his perfect example of the male body have done wonders for Internet traffic while squashing the egos of mere mortal men across the world. Unfortunately, there’s one thing that the Red Zone After Hours Body Wash ad campaign has thus far failed to achieve: selling Red Zone After Hours Body Wash.
At the end of the day, Old Spice is still Old Spice. A campaign to change the perception of the brand is honorable, but will it work? Will today’s youth, that consume social media, accept this tired brand as young and hip? Did the market research lie to us that women are responsible for buying their man’s body wash? Or, is it simply a matter fact: most men don’t care what they use in the shower as long as it looks, acts and smells somewhat like a soap product?
There’s only one way to find out: let the social media landscape speak up.
Old Spice is just that. Old. It was the first cologne I used when I was a kid because my dad had it some 30 years ago. Besides, cologne scented soap and my current cologne cannot coexist on my body. It would just smell weird and defeat the purpose. I’ll stick with my good ol soap bars. (cisco)
Social media is cheap and easy. The tools are typically free and the technical barriers to entry are pretty minimal. A social media campaign, on the other hand, is quite a bit more complex and time consuming. We should always make sure we make the distinction distinction between a tactical social media action and an planned and executed campaign. I’ve developed social communities for well over a decade and today social media is simply an extension of our old strategies. A social media campaign is simply a short-term mechanism to drive community involvement and interest in a brand or event. Keep in mind that ensuring your community grows and flourishes requires a lot of planning and attention, not to mention a really good idea. It always comes down to an idea.
What makes a social media campaign?
When developing a social media plan you need a few things in place before you can begin:
- An audience to talk to or an audience to build. There needs to be some sort of base to build from. A campaign that launches with a zero point is doomed to fail.
- An idea: something that people want to watch, consume, talk about, share and otherwise be entertained by.
- A voice or tone for the social media side of the brand (this is the complex part). Social is, well, um … social. Keep that in mind.
- A goal or metric you’re aiming for. Do you want to increase traffic? Build buzz? Shift perception? Let’s not talk about ROI at this point simply because it’s nearly impossible to measure directly. At least in terms of a single channel effort.
- A team to execute. A client, an account manager, a creative team, a technical team, and a money team. The last one is probably t he most important. Someone needs to be willing to put the resources behind the idea and take the bet that it’s going to pay off (in a positive way).
- A strategy to convert the action and activity into something valuable to the client/brand.
They need to market it like Extenze. They don’t care about being on a horse, but if their johnson would get bigger using it…. Otherwise, guys would simply opt for a 50 cent bar of soap, and go for the Irish Spring on the special occasions. (RebukesSnakes on Yahoo!)
There are certainly more aspects to a plan, but the above short list will guide us thorough this argument. Social media planning is hard. It’s difficult to plan something and anticipate with 100% accuracy to how the audience will respond and how big the campaign might grow. Sometimes really great ideas die on the vine when silly or half-baked ideas become part of Internet lore. When I plan campaigns I always build in a series of options, based on possible tracks or paths the campaign might grow into. This assumes that you’re willing to let your campaign slip through the tight control of your hands enough to allow your audience to feel like they own at least a part of it.
Old Spice did everything right. They created a compelling brand campaign that they could then translate into a social media campaign. Without the brand campaign, the social media campaign would have fallen flat. We’ve seen it a million times. Brands assume their crazy idea is so fun that people will automatically make it go viral. It’s not really a case of “if you build it, they will come” anymore. There needs to be critical mass with brand campaigns when they venture into social media. Using YouTube as a platform ensured that there was already an audience in place and an established base of people that already found the commercial series charming enough to sign up for updates. By launching the campaign where their audience already lived, it gave people the empowerment to participate and play. YouTube, by it’s very essence is owned by the community. This was demonstrated by the series of spoof and response videos that were spawned by the official videos.
What does this all mean?
I tip my hat to the people at W+K for pitching the idea to Old Spice and for actually figuring out a way to make it happen. Most of these ideas are killed because of their lack of concrete metrics or guaranteed results. It was a simple idea and didn’t take itself too seriously. But let’s no kid each other. This was not a cheap endeavor. Talent, props, lighting, sound, editing, cameras and crew, it all adds up. Too bad it didn’t sell more product. I suspect this campaign will be retired to a place where the Taco Bell Chihuahua now calls home: cute and adorable, but didn’t sell product.