How the Old Spice YouTube Campaign Increased Sales 107%
Stephen Voltz and Frtiz Grobe are best known as “the Coke and Mentos guys” who created one of the most watched viral videos of all time. They’ve written a new book called The Viral Video Marketing Manifesto where they analyze the common characteristics that all successful viral videos have in common.
One of the campaigns they analyze is the well-regarded Old Spice campaign. During the course of the campaign, sales increased significantly. At one point, according to Nielsen data, sales spiked 107% for the same month the year before.
What follows is an excerpt from Voltz and Grobe’s book, which explains how The Man Your Man Could Smell Like scores on their four rules of successful viral videos.
Be True: Although The Man Your Man Could Smell Like has many of the trappings of a traditional television commercial, which usually works against you online, it does a surprisingly good job at being true. On the one hand, this looks a lot like Disneyland Musical Marriage Proposal: it’s scripted, has perfect lights and sound, and Mustafa is exactly the kind of ideal-bodied, perfectly coiffed Hollywood actor that would typically ruin most viral efforts. But the very point of the ad is to make fun of precisely how much that flawless spokesmodel look contrasts with how the real people watching actually look and how much this fantasy world contrasts with ours.
Mustafa is both making his point for Old Spice and playing with us. He’s showing off for us what the life of the ideal man like him is like: one moment he’s home in the shower, the next he’s on a yacht and diamonds are appearing in his hand, and then he’s riding a horse down a tropical beach. And he does it in a way that shows he knows that we know it’s clearly pretend.
Mustafa’s direct, straight-to-the-camera delivery and the fact that he’s clearly having fun with this send-up of a typical television commercial do a great job of creating an immediate connection with the audience. It seems as though he’s really speaking directly to us and enjoying with us, the absurdity of the fantasy he’s pretending to sell.
In addition, part of what makes all of this work is that, like so many other successful online videos, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like is also shot in a single, uninterrupted take. Surprisingly, the only digital effect added after the shoot was the transformation of the oyster shell and tickets into the pile of diamonds out of which the Old Spice body wash appeared. Everything else was shot in real time as it actually happened.
The realistic bathroom set, complete with running shower, in which Mustafa first appears was specially designed so that it could be lifted away by a crane at exactly the right moment to reveal the boat set that was built behind it on a real beach. The boat set itself was shot from a low angle to hid the beach beneath it and make it appear as though the boat was actually sailing in the middle of the ocean. Then without breaking his direct gaze into the camera or missing the rhythm of his rapid-fire lines, Mustafa walked along the deck and settled himself onto a specially made saddlelike platform that was out of sight, just below the frame of the camera. Crew members then pulled the platform along on cables until it gently slid Mustafa right onto the back of the waiting white horse.
Getting everything to work perfectly took no less than 67 separate takes, but Mustafa and the team from Old Spice’s agency, Wieden + Kennedy, knew that the piece had to be done in a single, unedited shot, so they kept at it until they got what they needed. The behind-the-scenes video taken during the shoot that shows how it all worked is well worth a look.
Don’t Waste My Time: Not a second is wasted. From the moment the ad begins and Mustafa looks directly into the camera to address the “ladies” watching at home, we get nothing but money shot after money shot. It goes right from one clever scene change to another, with surprising costume changes and funny lines – all packed tightly into 30 seconds. There are no establishing shots to set the scene, and there is no time wasted on introducing Mustafa’s “character.” High marks here.
Be Unforgettable: This is where the video excels. Mustafa’s mock-serious attitude, his cheeky but playful “look at me, ladies, and see how much more magnificent I am than you man” direct-to-the-camera message, and the impressive shower-to-boat-to-beach-to-horseback transformations all combine to make for a memorable, one-of-a-kind experience.
Humanity: As with Rule One, here too this piece goes against what we’d ordinarily recommend: a too-perfect actor looking down on all of us from a pedestal, but here it’s all done in order to parody exactly that. We also get to see something of the real Isaiah Mustafa having some fun with his own hyperperfect male model image. He comes across as a real and likeable guy.
Music: None but the traditional Old Spice jingle at the end, which was all it needed.
What We Might Have Done Differently: This highly produced piece works extremely well, walking a difficult line to find success both on TV and online. If we focus only on what would help make it more contagious online, two strengths emerge that could be built on: the direct address to the audience and the elaborate sequence of set changes. Just how crazy could those set changes get? Could we eliminate the need for that one digital effect? We would take this video more in the direction of OK Go’s This Too Shall Pass – Rube Goldberg Machine or LIPDUB: I Gotta Feeling (Comm-UQAM 2009), in which the sequence of events captured in one unbroken shot is mind-bogglingly elaborate and everything is undeniably real. We’d love to see what would happen if we mixed together the scale and truth of This Too Shall Pass – Rube Goldberg Machine with the concept and brash, playful attitude ofThe Man Your Man Could Smell Like.