Old Spice: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

Transcription

1 Old Spice: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like This case study places students in the role of Marc Pritchard, Global Marketing Officer at Procter & Gamble. Pritchard reflects on the resounding success of recent advertising and social media campaigns to reposition the Old Spice brand in the consumer marketplace, and considers his strategic options for the future of the repositioning campaign. The award-winning Old Spice campaign featured creative mass media advertisements as well as highly innovative uses of multiple social media platforms. Case study discussion topics include brand repositioning, demographic and psychographic market segmentation, advertising, consumer engagement and interaction, social media, generating buzz, overexposure risk and spokesperson campaigns. Key Words: Branding, repositioning, social media, advertising, consumer engagement

2 Old Spice: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like Marc Pritchard, Global Marketing Officer at Procter & Gamble (P&G), sat in his office one morning in July Sipping his coffee during a rare moment of peace and quiet, he reflected on P&G s recent achievements with the Old Spice brand. People are still talking about the The Man Your Man Could Smell Like commercial all over YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, he mused. Working with advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, his team had created a massive buzz around Old Spice in the market, and taken on Unilever s rival Axe brand head on. While Axe was marketed primarily to young males, Pritchard had set his sights on a much wider target demographic for his Old Spice campaign. We ve got the young men talking, but we ve got their girlfriends, their parents and the media talking as well... And not only had he created buzz around the Old Spice brand, he had actually listened to what his target demographic was saying and engaged them in a conversation. So what was next, he wondered. Had he successfully repositioned Old Spice from an outdated brand to one that was classic, yet cool? Or had he just begun? He knew he had pushed P&G s social media marketing to new heights, but what was now required to maintain the buzz he had worked so hard to create? Sales were increasing, so did he need to do anything more? History of Old Spice Originally marketed as a men s brand, Old Spice was launched in 1938 as a nautical-themed line of shaving soaps and aftershave lotions. Old Spice held true to this brand identity for decades, with television advertising campaigns centered on masculine sex appeal throughout the 1980s.1 The scent of Old Spice aftershave became iconic in North American culture. By the end of the 1980s, however, the brand began to exhibit signs of aging along with its loyal customers. Old Spice had lost its appeal among younger men; its once-powerful messaging and imagery no longer resonated with new generations of buyers. Procter & Gamble acquired the Old Spice brand in 1990 and promptly extended the product line into new deodorant products. Television commercials and ad campaigns focused less on masculinity and shaving, and more on the technical antiperspirant and odor-fighting qualities of Old Spice deodorant products. P&G featured celebrities such as Will Ferrell and Patrick Harris in these advertisements in an effort to resonate with younger audiences.2 Overall sales increased, but not significantly. In the 2000s, the male grooming product market in North America began to change. Young men aged began paying greater attention to personal grooming and were purchasing new products such as body washes and body sprays in place of more traditional bar soaps and

3 colognes. P&G s market research highlighted two interesting trends. First, that bar soap was positioned as a gender-neutral product in the marketplace, and second, that men tended to stay loyal to specific brands for long periods of time. Consequentially, brands of body washes and sprays targeted specifically at young men presented a massive growth opportunity. Men s grooming products quickly became the fastest growing segment in the personal grooming products market. Old Spice introduced body wash and body spray products, and sales grew rapidly in the expanding market. However, P&G had caught the bandwagon late, and trailed Unilever s Axe and Gillette s copycat TAG brand. The battle for market share began to shift in 2005 with P&G s acquisition of Gillette. Nevertheless, the Old Spice brand faced a crowding market and sales began to decline shortly thereafter in In response, Old Spice launched the Old Spice Challenge campaign in 2007 a series of ads that quite literally challenged men to purchase and try the masculine scent of Old Spice body washes.3 Focusing on New Customers In 2009, P&G strove to push Old Spice into the market leader position for men s deodorant products, targeting 20% market share worth US $1 billion. To achieve this, P&G needed to reposition the brand from one known as old and meant for grandfathers to one for the young. This feat seemed daunting, but GMO Marc Pritchard believed it could be done.4 P&G recognized that it was necessary, but could be difficult, to respect and pay homage to the strong, iconic Old Spice brand whilst campaigning new products targeted at a younger demographic. In an effort to appeal to this new demographic and retain the loyalty of long-time buyers, the Old Spice brand was organized into three distinct product lines: (1) Classic offered the traditional Old Spice scent in the form of shaving products, deodorant sticks and body washes. (2) High Endurance was a collection of basic deodorants, body washes and hair products with newer scents and features. (3) Red Zone was promoted as an up-market line of deodorants, body washes and body sprays with a time-released scent. P&G recognized the difficulty of repositioning the brand image in the minds of men aged 18 to 35, their primary audience and market, who associated the Old Spice brand with their fathers. So instead of focusing exclusively on young men (as did campaigns from Axe and TAG), Pritchard decided to expand his target audience beyond existing category purchasers to include women, who had significant influence over men s purchases of grooming products, as well as first-time product category buyers. Television Campaign: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like To start the brand repositioning, P&G launched The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

4 campaign. Created in combination with advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, the campaign consisted of two pairs of 30- and 15-second television commercials. The initial wave of advertisements was broadcast in February 2010, the second wave of follow-up ads in June The approach of The Man Your Man Could Small Like campaign was to embrace the brand s heritage keeping trademark touches like the signature whistle at the end of the ads while updating the messaging and imagery with more swagger and timely humor. For The Man Your Man Could Smell Like campaign, the P&G team introduced Isaiah Mustafa, an American actor and former NFL receiver, as the new spokesman and face of Old Spice. He s funny, he s attractive, he s neutral and he s current, said James Moorhead, P&G Brand Manager for Old Spice. The creative team wanted his iconic character to be loved equally by women and men a ladies man who was OK for men to love as well. The first ad featured Mustafa reciting a deadpan, tongue-in-cheek monologue about how anything is possible if a man used Old Spice. 5 In this spot, Mustafa demonstrated to women how their lives could be better with a man who switched from some lady-scented body wash to Old Spice body wash. Mustafa recited his dialogue in a single uninterrupted take over a series of transitioning scenery wherein the spokesman went from standing in a bathroom to walking on a sailboat to riding a horse on a beach. The cascading background scenery changes were intentionally dramatic as the iconic spokesman had to be introduced as larger than life, a character that transcended the mundane. Wieden+Kennedy chose Super Bowl XLIV network broadcasting as their platform to launch the campaign because of the huge viewership. This first Old Spice ad was an instant hit, going viral online and gaining more traction than any other Super Bowl commercial that year.6 In an interview with Leo Laporte of TWiT.tv, a podcast featuring discussions on current technology news, Wieden+Kennedy s Craig Allen and Eric Kellman (copywriter and art director of the Old Spice commercials) shocked both the audience and interviewer when they revealed that the entire ad had been filmed in a single shot without any use of CGI (computer generated imagery). Laporte explained that the ad had to be something that grabs the eyes and would make men watching it want to smell like and be like the man in the commercial. 7 In the five months following the first airing, the commercial attracted more than 16 million views on YouTube. In late June 2010, the unique ad won the Film Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Jury president and CCO of Leo Burnett Mark Tutssel enthused, It took an old, sleepy brand and woke it up and overnight wove its way into popular culture. 8 Isaiah Mustafa, the Old Spice Man, also reached instant celebrity status. He was invited to appear on popular television talk shows such as Ellen Degeneres, Oprah, CBS s The Early Show, TV Guide and ESPN s First Take. In April 2010, Mustafa was named one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in The World by People Magazine. Following on the success of The Man Your Man Could Smell Like ad, P&G launched a

5 follow-up commercial called Questions. 9 In this ad, Mustafa started with his trademark greeting Hello, Ladies in his husky voice before querying women about how their men look and smell. Jumping from one scene to the next, Mustafa goes logrolling, renovates a kitchen, bakes a cake, dives from a waterfall and walks on water. The theme of the ad was to tell women that while their own men may not be nearly as perfect or manly as him, they could at least smell like him by using Old Spice body wash. In an interesting reversal of traditional outlet exposure the advertisement aired online first, then in movie theaters over the following weekend, and then though national television spots the following week. The Questions ad gained viral exposure much faster than the original ad, riding on the buzz and hype from the first wave of the campaign; in only one month, the ad reached 11 million views on YouTube. Online Campaign: Old Spice Responses The Old Spice television advertisements were a massive success in terms of viral video, but the creative team was not satisfied with resting on their laurels. On July 12th, they decided to take the Old Spice marketing campaign to real-time internet. P&G and Wieden+Kennedy gathered their team of writers, creative directors, digital marketing agents and technologists along with actor Isaiah Mustafa on a film set staged as a bathroom. They then kicked off what many industry observers thought was the social media marketing coup of this century the Old Spice Responses campaign.10 The group seeded various social networks such as YouTube11, Facebook12 and Twitter13 with an invitation to ask questions of Mustafa's character, their dashing, shirtless spokesman with over-the-top humor. All responses were tracked and selected users received direct and personalized responses from Mustafa in the form of short, funny YouTube videos. According to Iain Tait, Wieden+Kennedy s Global Interactive Creative Director, This whole idea of responding to people and being very smart about who we decided to respond to, and in what manner, that wouldn't have worked if we hadn't done it in a format like YouTube where we are able to embed it. People are very familiar with the ways of sharing it, liking it and favoring it, and just the fact that it can go everywhere very quickly was a huge positive. 14 The Old Spice marketing team knew they could not simply respond to questions and tweets (direct messages on the Twitter platform) with words alone; that had been done before and would not have been unique or memorable. Embracing the conversational and interactive nature of social media, the team knew that replying through personalized video could be far more phenomenal and create even more buzz than the original television ads. The Old Spice team could not realistically respond to all comments and questions. They shortlisted questions for responses based on two principles. First, they chose question topics that were relevant and aligned with the Old Spice brand and campaign positioning. Second, they intentionally selected questions from high-profile users social influencers and visible

6 personalities with significant follower communities, such as Digg founder Kevin Rose, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton and actress Alyssa Milano. Selected mainstream media outlets such as the Ellen Show, GQ, Guy Kawasaki, Huffington Post and Gizmodo also received responses, which in turn led to massive mainstream PR when content was shared with their audiences. The Old Spice man even helped one Twitter user propose to his girlfriend. The Old Spice Responses campaign appealed to people s egos, felt very personalized and created a significant amount of buzz around the brand in popular culture. The users who received responses, as well as a very large number of those who did not, shared links to the video responses through Twitter, Facebook and numerous other social networks. The marketing team decided to run the online Responses campaign for only a short three-day period, from July 12-14, Their intention was to generate fresh buzz around their spokesman and thereby draw interest to the earlier television ads, without overexposing the personality or brand. The budget for the Responses campaign was significantly less than for the television ads, yet the campaign was a resounding success. It combined unique advertising, creative writing and the proficient use of social media as a two-way communication channel to activate mainstream brand coverage. Old Spice Responses topped 6 million total views in the first 24 hours on YouTube, receiving more viewer traffic than President Obama s victory speech. Old Spice received thousands of online mentions, over 60,000 tweets and a 1000% increase in Twitter channel following on July 13th alone. According to Nielsen data provided by Procter & Gamble, overall sales of Old Spice body wash products increased 11 percent in the 12 months prior to July 2010, 27 percent in the six months prior and 55 percent from April to June With the release of two new television spots and the Responses campaign, Old Spice saw body wash product sales increase 107 percent in July 2010 alone. Data supplied by consultant Sanford C. Bernstein also showed substantial increases in the Red Zone line, with July sales up 29 percent from March.15 Moving Forward Marc Pritchard pressed the intercom buzzer on his desk and paged his assistant. Jenn, I think I need to meet with Maggie Entwistle next week. See if you can line up a lunch with her please. Although everything seemed too good to be true, Pritchard knew instinctively that he could not take his foot off the accelerator just yet. Working with Entwistle, Creative Director at Wieden+Kennedy, he had brought Old Spice back to relevance. Once an old and dying brand, Old Spice was now the hot topic of conversation for young men and young women across North America. Sales were up, margins were up, morale was up but had they finished what they started? Maybe, he thought to himself, but then again, we may have just created the tip of our own iceberg. Should P&G try to maintain the current campaign s momentum, and possibly risk too much of a good thing and having the novelty of the campaign wear thin? Or should the intensity of the

7 campaign be downgraded while the market was abuzz, leaving consumers wishing for more?

8 EXHIBITS Exhibit 1: Old Spice Classic commercials Source: YouTube Exhibit 2: Old Spice Product Line (2010) Source:

9 Exhibit 3: TV commercial, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like (2010) Source: YouTube

10 Exhibit 4: Social Media Campaign-Old Spice Responses Source: Old Spice Twitter Account & Facebook Account, Exhibit 5: Social Media Statistics YouTube (youtube.com/user/oldspice) Name: Old Spice Channel Views: 9,704,274 Upload Views: 117,429,622 Joined: January 01, 2006 Subscribers: 147,180 Website: Country: United States Accolades: #2 - Most Subscribed (All Time) - Sponsors #1 - Most Viewed (This Month) #1 - Most Viewed (This Month) - Sponsors #1 - Most Viewed (All Time) Sponsors Twitter (twitter.com/oldspice) Increase in user followers from 8,000 to 95,267 after the Old Spice response campaign Facebook (facebook.com/oldspice) Increase in user followers from to 717,269 after the Old Spice response campaign