I Will Not Write About Old Spice

I will resist the urge.  Already there are too many write-ups about the inspirational campaign from a social media perspective.  I’m going to keep telling myself, “Please don’t write about Old Spice.”

I am not going to share how the social campaign is a brilliant extension of a series of creative and funny TV commercials.  I’m not going to point out that the campaign had awareness and life long before the social media play, or how the real-time authoring of content and demonstrated effects could change the game of how advertisers think – not to mention drive the consumption of their earlier commercials.  No one wants to know there are already rumors of a sitcom for Isaiah Mustafa, or that the wave of parodies (like this one and this one) is going to give the whole concept legs for quite some time.

I can’t imagine anyone wants to hear about integration of paid and earned media again, or how ending the video effort quickly adds to the mystique and likelihood of a successful follow-up.  I’m also not going to call out the people who are asking, “But is it making Old Spice fall off the shelves? Is anyone buying more?” since I’m sure people never ask that about TV commercials the day they first air.  No way I’m going to share how brilliant sharing behind the scenes is, nor how I really think it’s brilliant to mix who they reply to between influencers and “normal people” who barely have any followers.

I also won’t tell anyone how their High Endurance deodorant was the fascination of my fraternity in college as the best working product out there, and how word of mouth made it successful.  This was long before “social media” back in the days when we had to use modems to connect to AOL 2.0.  If I share that I’ll surely date myself.  Now it’s possible to get 61 million views on Youtube.

I sincerely hope that people just sit back and enjoy the brilliant piece of work, and stop giving P&G the link love.  Who’s with me?  (By the way, I’m glad to hear he stopped the oil spill).

Photo credit: khairilfz via Flickr

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Nintendo Wii: When Good Content Speaks for Itself

A great advertisement disguised as a YouTube video of game footage from Wario Land for the Nintendo Wii is being passed around today.  If the counts are accurate it hit over 250K views today alone.  The ad cleverly leverages a flash physics engine and pretty much speaks for itself.  This is a great example where a creative team pulled together a compelling use of the technology to drive a marketing campaign.  The content is clean, well produced and is based off a great idea.  Simple, well-executed creative, matched with great execution can yield phenomenal results.  I’d love to find out whether an agency was involved in generating the content or the idea.

 

Check it out for yourself – it’s worth it:

 

 

Note: At the end, try grabbing some of the “pieces” with your mouse and dragging them on the screen.

 

Have any other examples of simple ideas that would make an interactive marketer think, “I wish I thought of that”?