If you’ve spent any time on the Internet this week, you seen the Old Spice video responses campaign marathon. It’s a marketing ploy so invasive, it’s incredible; so unbridled, it’s unnerving. The brand’s YouTube channel now hosts almost 200 videos, most of which are customized responses to brand mentions on Twitter and YouTube video comments featuring Isaiah Mustafa, the actor and current face of Old Spice. Is this a showcase on the future of conversational marketing, or is merely testing the limits of how much we love when comedy covers stabs at our privacy? It might be both.
The idea is not anything new.
Remember the viral video sensation of 2007? Two kids made a YouTube video of a glitch in an EA Sports Tiger Woods Pro Golf video game.
EA responded with a YouTube video that ran on television as an ad with a claim that there was no glitch; that Tiger Woods was actually was good enough to walk on water. The video received almost five times as many views as the user-generated parody:
Wheat Thins will hunt you down
Last month, Wheat Thins started hunting down Twitter users who comment about the the popular crunchy product. The Wheat Thins squad physically tracks down the people in their homes or when they’re out at a restaurant leaving one victim bewildered, glancing nervously at the cameras and wondering aloud, “Don’t I have to sign something?”
The Old Spice campaign is no doubt miles ahead of other viral marketing attempts. Take a look at Visible Measures’ statistics from the video series’ first few days: 
To me, this campaign was really eye-opening. It signifies two major trends happening in the new media world right now:
1) A business-driven convergence of popular social media platforms.
Think back to 2009. Which two emerging trends went crazy that year? Twitter usage was the biggest upward trend. The other was online video, which, with the help of Hulu, took huge strides.
2) Advertising taking some control over social media
The Old Spice campaign was organized by Weiden + Kennedy, and it was an aggressive move from the advertising firm. Having graduated from Boston University with a PR degree, I’ve been told PR departments should control social media. Now, I’m being exposed to some different points of view. While I still think PR skills (notice I didn’t say “firms”) are best to handle day-to-day “conversation management,” I’m seeing advertising disciplines (again) taking the lead in creating social media campaigns.
If you want to read more about the Old Spice campaign, see the following articles:
http://mashable.com/2010/07/15/old-spice-stats/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1295266/Old-Spice-adverts-masculine-ever.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
What an interesting week. Thank you for the thoughtful recap Eric. Interested to hear more about your definition of PR “skills” vs the use of the word “firm” – A nuance. This is likely an important media + culture hint…I’m tuned in.
Thanks for the comment, Meghan.
Many PR firms use PR skills for media relations. But those skills can be present in other places as well. Marketing and Ad firm, in-house, digital agencies, social media, etc. We need to stop thinking in terms of industry boundaries and start thinking in terms that relate to all communication because it’s all coming together.