Old Spice, New Tone

Old Spice Guy Isaiah Mustafa is scoring big with social media users.

Image: Old Spice via YouTube

Can your brand get more than 13 million page views on YouTube and add more than 43,000 followers on Twitter seemingly overnight? If your brand was Old Spice, it could.

The men’s grooming-products maker is making a viral splash on YouTube with a 48-hour campaign featuring perma-shirtless Old Spice Guy Isaiah Mustafa, responding to tweets in real time and posting YouTube video responses to questions coming in via Facebook and other social-media sites—even popping the question from one user to his girlfriend.

For those who have been watching the brand, Old Spice’s new initiative is just another step in the right marketing direction. “Old Spice has been doing some really smart marketing work for awhile, so perhaps it’s no surprise to see such an innovative concept coming from them,” says Sam Ford, director of Digital Strategy at Peppercom Communications.

Old Spice may be the first company to have integrated real-time interactions with users across multiple platforms. But it's not the first brand to have dipped into Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to reach out to clients and try to build more of a following. Last summer, Skittles essentially turned over its site to users for a limited time. It let them define what the brand is to them, and because users felt like an important extension of the brand, the campaign worked.

And while the social-media platforms themselves still struggle to find a way to quantify the level of exposure they bring to companies, brands themselves are using this yet opportunity to venture into new waters. And that could be why Old Spice’s campaign resonated with so many users—because it used a fresh approach and maintained an element that's key to the platform: an informal tone.

Companies do best when they adopt the tone their customers use while online, social-media experts say. That depends on the brand, for sure. People don’t expect JPMorgan Chase to be all buddy-buddy. But when it comes to personal grooming, a little tongue-in-cheek goes a long way. When Virginia’s C.B. Fleet launched a new at-home colonics product for “elective rectal cleansing,” the company used humor to target its key demographic, gay men. Gillette’s new focus on full-body "manscaping" led users to an online tutorial on how to trim delicate areas. With that in mind, Ford says, “The informality and tone of the commercials—and the playfulness of the campaign—speaks to how many companies need to learn how to be, well, friendlier in a social space.”

Another reason the campaign worked was because it listened to users, something that most companies in the social-media space need to learn how to do. Mustafa had the Old Spice bodywash tucked into his towel in many of the video responses, but he wasn’t overtly pushing it. That scores major points with media-savvy users who are bombarded with media messages all day every day.

But Ford warns that the cookie-cutter approach will likely not work for other companies seeking to gain the same viral buzz. “The campaign had a gimmick factor, to be sure, in that it will be impossible for other brands to get this type of publicity and word-of-mouth from doing video responses to tweets once the novelty has worn off.”

So what can small businesses, who don’t have millions in marketing dollars, do to mount successful social-media campaigns? Some tips from Ford:

• Don’t enter a new platform unless you know you have time to manage it properly.
• Don’t promise a deeper degree of discussion than you’re prepared to deliver.
• Don’t think you can control the conversation when you enter into a social platform.
• Don’t use traditional marketing-speak in a place meant for casual conversation.
• Think about how to create spreadable media that will be useful content for people in their own conversations.

Of course, having a shirtless pitchman like Mustafa could also go a long way toward getting initial brand recognition. But before running off to audition ab guys, consider if that's the right fit for your company.