We just returned from a Portland Advertising Federation luncheon, featuring a presentation by Dean McBeth, the Senior Digital Strategist of Procter & Gamble brands for Wieden+Kennedy, who shared his thoughts on being part of one of the most successful viral campaigns in history. As you might imagine, there was much more to the “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign than a towel, a charismatic actor and a horse (who allegedly did something off-brand that needed to be edited out of the original ad). Old Spice might be the brand your brand could smell like, but it’s harder to pull off than it sounds.
Trust
McBeth emphasized several times that the success of the Old Spice “response” campaign, which produced 186 personalized video responses over the course of 2 1/2 days, hinged entirely on establishing trust between the agency and brand. Waiting three weeks for the company lawyers to approve each tweet was not an option—not to mention the fact that “lawyer” and “hilarious” are rarely seen in the same sentence.
Collaboration
In addition to an excellent working relationship between the brand and the agency, Wieden+Kennedy’s team had the advantage of a highly collaborative environment to work in. Creative worked seamlessly with digital strategists and community managers to create a compelling campaign that leveraged a variety of social tools and existing relationships. Collaboration promotes creativity. If an agency doesn’t facilitate that sort of interdepartmental mingling, it may pay the price in lost originality. (One of many reasons why we insist that our kitchen keg is a legitimate business expense.)
Participation
“None of this was spam,” says McBeth of the 186 video responses the campaign produced. “No one was added to this story that didn’t opt-in to it.” Even the highest-profile subjects of the video responses had history with the campaign. Ellen DeGeneres had “The Old Spice Guy” (Isaiah Mustafa) as a guest on her show. Perez Hilton had blogged about the campaign. And George Stephanopoulos submitted an unsolicited question of his own via Twitter. As a result, the subjects were already happy to be a part of the fun, rather than being turned off by a spammy (and potentially counterproductive) attempt at riding social media coattails.
Strategy
According to McBeth, the Old Spice campaign “isn’t a social media success story. It’s an integrated success story.” The team understood that Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and the like are tools, not substitutes for strategies. So although there was a strong social component to the campaign that wouldn’t have been possible prior to the popularity of these media, they didn’t enter into the conversation until there was a well-defined strategy in place.
Synchronicity
Finally, McBeth freely admitted that there was no way to predict the success of the campaign or to guarantee viral success. They were fortunate enough to have a number of elements working in their favor, including a charismatic actor with impeccable comic timing.
Of course, like the old saying goes, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Dean McBeth and his team at Wieden+Kennedy invested tremendous time and effort into setting the stage for their well-deserved success, and we’re extremely grateful to him for taking the time to pull back the towel—er, curtain—on some of their strategies.
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