The Man Your Man Could Smell Like Advertising Campaign
Old Spice is American brand of male grooming products. Procter & Gamble owns the brand since 1990 and manufactures its products. The ad I have chosen is of body wash for men. Old Spice had introduced the product to the market in 2003.
The advertising campaign is called ''The man your man could smell like'' and it features Isaiah Mustafah, who is American actor and former NFL player.
Old Spice previous advertising campaign was of a male deodorant. It featured Terry Crews and had a slogan that said ''Smell is a power''. It is similar to the one I have chosen in terms of using a celebrity with masculine body as a model.
The very old Old Spice campaigns (of 1970s) featured sea and waves, nice woman and a surfer man. It was leaving feeling of freshness and its slogan was ''The freshest feeling in the world''.
''The man your man could smell like'' campaigns tries to create very strong association between the Old Spice brand and the masculine, strong and attractive male. In this particular case Isaiah Mustafah was chosen as the ''source of information'' because of his attractive physical appereance. As we already know good looking people are thought to be smarter, cooler and happier and their beauty creates credibility among teh potential buyers.
In this case marketers were creating secondary demand by persuading consumers to use their brand specifically. At the same time the coomercial evokes emotions.
Body wash in general is very low-involvement category. The product itself does not evoke any specific feelings or does not differentiate from others brands. That is why Old Spice used visual image, i.e. half naked attractive guy with strong muscules in oder to have big emotional impact. In fact the company is marketing a sex type product, which in in our case is ''for men only''. At the same time it is using the gender-bending strategy by selling the ''masculine'' product to women. Although we know that nude models generate negative feelings among same-sex consumers, in our case it is not an issues, since although the product is for men, but the advertising campaign is targeting women. Having the attractive half naked actor in the ad makes sure that women will definitely watch it till the end and will not change the channel.
The only ''danger'' in the ad is that it draws attention at the actor, who may be very atttractive for women and because of that draw their attention away from the products. So as a result women may not recall ad's content or which is even worse, the brand of the product.
The advertising implies that the body wash in for men, who are masculine, who can achieve everything and who are ''on a horse''. Marketers make women recognize the difference between the current state (having ordinary partners) and the ideal state (having a partner like Isaiah). And then, they introduce the solution – their product. Personally I think that it will affect only women who are being influenced easily, since the message is purely ohsychological. Thinking logically, we all know that the body wash itself will not make the man. But on the other hand the strong association between the brand and the masculine and attractive man may add self-confidence and have value-added effect on their ego.
In order to see the whole picture and understand what was the main objective of the advertising campaign, we should take into consideration the whole situation in the market. At the time, when Old Spice issued the new body wash product its main competitors Nivea and Dove also issued body wash products for men. Parallel to that Old Spice knew that Dove had big army of brand loyal female customers. That is why the main objective of Old Spice advertising campaign has not only been introducing the product to the market and driving sales, but also to create fan base and engage them at deeper level. In order to reach that objective the advertising campaign was also followed by so-called ''response'' campaign.
Old Spice decided to use engagement marketing technique. It announced a follow-up campaign, where brand fans could ask questions to Isaiah Mustafah and he would address personalized answer to them on YouTube. Besides that fans and Isaiah intercated with him through Twitter and Facebook.
Conclusion
The campaign became extremely successful. It increased sales, reached high brand recognition and its sales increased by 60% from the previous year. Below are the details from Marketing Week article (http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/how-the-old-spice-hunk-took-over-the-world/3030137), which illustrated the results of the successful Old Spice campaign.
On the first day the campaign already had 5.9 million YouTube views. On the second day it already became number 8 (out of 11) most popular video on the Internet. By the third day its Youtube views were already over 20 million nd one week after the launch the number overpassed 40 million. Parallel to that Old Spice increased its followers number by 2700% and increased its Facebook fans base by 60% as a result having 800,000 fans. At the same time their Facebook fan interactions by 800%. It is needless to say that Old Spice official website traffic also went up by 300%.
Old Spice gained 150,000 YouTube subscribers and became #2 Most Subscribed Branded Channel on YouTube. As to the ad video it became #1 All-Time Most Viewed on YouTube.
Works Cited
"How the Old Spice hunk took over the world." Marketing Week. Web. 14 Sep 2011.
