Opinion

Old Spice: Best use of social media yet?

Old_Spice_guyToday has been a good day. You know those very rare moments where you see an advertising idea and you can recognise not only how good it is, but how it’s going to inspire other great work? What Old Spice did next is one of those moments.

It combines great advertising, great writing, a huge PR idea and excellent use of social media as a two-way channel.  

The story so far, for those who missed it, is that Wieden + Kennedy created this ad for Old Spice. It features actor and former NFL athlete Isaiah Mustafa:

The Old Spice ad deservedly won the Film grand prix at the Cannes Lions.

And over the last few hours it’s been driving the social media world mad with the latest development.

If you tweet him a question @OldSpice, he’ll make a video to respond. Fast.

Hell, even Biz Stone, the founder of Twitter has been getting in on the act:

This is the bit that stuns me. In the last 24 hours, I count 116 new Old Spice videos. Every one in response to a Tweet.

Let’s say that again – 116 videos. Wieden + Kennedy must have an army of copywriters working on this.

He’s already done the first marriage proposal:

And where the smart PR comes in is that many of them are in response to media outlets. Which in turn guarantees massive mainstream PR when they share the content with their own audiences. Which guarantees that even more media outlets will give it a go too.

There’s one for The Ellen Show:

And GQ:

And Perez Hilton:

And Guy Kawasaki:

And Huffington Post:

And this particularly good one for Gizmodo:

Trendsmap_Old_Spice mumbrellaOf course, in each case, these outlets will treat this as wonderful tailored content and happily share it.

I’ve a feeling that this will turn out to be the case study from how to turn advertising into content and how to use social media to activate mainstream coverage.

Holy moly. When advertising is good, it’s really good, isn’t it?

Tim Burrowes

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