Old Spice's agency flexes its bulging stats

"Did the Old Spice campaign really work?" has become modern marketing's version of "Who lost China?" Camps are firmly established, and facts are selectively deployed. Old Spice says it's ecstatic with the results, and most independent analysis appears to back them up. Until now, Old Spice agency Wieden + Kennedy has generally stayed out of the effectiveness debate. But now the shop has released a video case history of the campaign, shown below, explaining how it sought to reach women and men simultaneously. It's mostly a sizzle reel of the spots, their many imitations and the campaign's impact in pop culture. W+K marshals an array of data points to buttress the it's-a-success side. The agency's video doesn't provide source citations for the facts, so I guess we'll put them in the "assertions" bucket. With that caveat, here are some of the key stats highlighted by the agency:

• Old Spice accounted for 75 percent of conversations in the category in the first three months of 2010.
• Half the conversations came from women.
• The YouTube/Twitter social media response campaign was "the fastest-growing and most popular interactive campaign in history."
• More people watched its videos in 24 hours than those who watched Obama's presidential victory speech. (Which most of us can agree is kinda sad.)
• Total video views reached 40 million in a week.
• Campaign impressions: 1.4 billion.
• Since the campaign launched, Old Spice Bodywash sales are up 27 percent; in the last three months up. 55 percent; and in the last month up 107 percent.

UPDATE: The video has been removed from YouTube after a copyright claim by W+K. It was apparently not supposed to be released to the public. We'll post an alternative clip if possible.

UPDATE 2: Here's a new version. Enjoy.

Filed under Morrissey, Old Spice, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (24)

Hey Old Spice haters, sales are up 107%

The applause for Old Spice's incredible YouTube blitz this month hadn't even died down when critics started panning the effort as ineffective. Rushing to judgment, some bloggers cited 52-week sales figures from before the video responses launched as a sign that Wieden + Kennedy's efforts were underwhelming. Contrarians jumped on these early reports as a chance to bash clever social media stunts in general. But now the numbers are in, and it's hard to argue that this campaign doesn't just smell like a man; it smells like victory. In her new analysis of the Old Spice video push, Adweek's Eleftheria Parpis has this summary: "According to Nielsen data provided by Old Spice, overall sales for Old Spice body-wash products are up 11 percent in the last 12 months; up 27 percent in the last six months; up 55 percent in the last three months; and in the last month, with two new TV spots and the online response videos, up a whopping 107 percent." So isn't that enough to satisfy the critics? Perhaps, but only grudgingly. In his Adweek column today, a curmudgeonly Joseph Jaffe gives the campaign a mild share of praise amid a thicket of caveats: "It's hard to determine how much of (the sales increase) was due to an aggressive couponing campaign which was in market simultaneously, but directionally, there does appear to be a correlation between creative resonance, social momentum and sales." Not quite a resounding endorsement, but it'll have to do.

Filed under Griner, Old Spice, Parpis, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (23)

Old Spice guy calls it a day after 184 videos

The Old Spice guy has left the bathroom. After filming, by our count, 184 personalized videos for his fans, Isaiah Mustafa bids farewell, for now, in the clip below. If you didn't get your own video, don't blame him. "I am just one ridiculously handsome man. I can't write to everyone," he points out. The YouTube stunt is already being called the best social-media ad campaign ever, though it would be good to remember that the real-time, responsive nature of the videos wouldn't have meant much without the more traditional element—a brilliant character written by Wieden + Kennedy and performed hilariously by Mustafa. We'll surely see copycat efforts in the coming months. Let's hope the content, not just the delivery of it, is half as enjoyable as this was. Silver fish hand catch!

Filed under Nudd, Old Spice, Personal care, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (9)

Old Spice blitz includes a marriage proposal

Yesterday's blitzkrieg of 100-plus personal YouTube thank-you notes by Isaiah "Old Spice Guy" Mustafa was truly something to behold, and not just because it included a shout-out to AdFreak's own Tim Nudd. The Wieden + Kennedy team's reaction time was pretty incredible, as illustrated by my favorite video, below: a marriage proposal Mustafa made on behalf of a random guy on Twitter. @Jsbeals made this request of Old Spice: "Can U Ask my girlfriend to marry me? Her name is Angela A. Hutt-Chamberlin." Less than three hours later, Mustafa was holding a ring in the glow of candlelight and asking Angela to "make Jsbeals the happiest man in the world and marry him in real life." Obviously, with the request coming from such a beacon of masculine perfection, there was only one answer she could give. Now, that's engagement.

Filed under Griner, Old Spice, Personal care, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (6)

Old Spice guy personally thanks online fans

Old Spice and Wieden + Kennedy are well aware that they have a serious megahit on their hands with Isaiah Mustafa, aka "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like." He's done the two main TV spots, as well as the mustache clip, and now, in a truly fantastic addition to the campaign, he's doing a slew of personalized videos in which he thanks individual people—bloggers, YouTube commenters, Twitterers, celebrities—who've complimented his ads online. Check out his message to Apolo Ohno below, and see a crazy 18 more videos after the jump. The writing is all great, and the work takes the concept of a brand joining the conversation online to wonderful new levels. The only downside, of course, is that he hasn't done a video for us yet.  UPDATE: Actually, he has given us a shout-out, too. Also, these first 19 videos were just the beginning. There must be more than 100 on Old Spice's YouTube channel by now.

Click to read more ...

Filed under Nudd, Old Spice, Personal care, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (17)

Old Spice guy even cooler with a mustache

Isaiah Mustafa is back on a boat, and sporting a completely CGI-less mustache, in this latest Old Spice mini-gem from Wieden + Kennedy. "Use Old Spice Body Wash and get ready for a manly mustache surprise," the YouTube page wisely counsels.

Filed under Nudd, Old Spice, Personal care, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (0)

Old Spice guy walks you through second ad

If there's been one knock against Isaiah Mustafa's second Old Spice ad, it's that the spot appears to use CGI—something the original famously did not. But actually, Mustafa says this one was completely CGI-free, too. In the interview below, from G4's Attack of the Show, Mustafa walks you through the new Wieden + Kennedy ad step by step. Apparently, his legs in the opening shot are prosthetics, and he was wearing a harness and wire the entire time, which is how he's able to swan dive into the hot tub. The one secret he won't divulge is how he changes from shorts into jeans at the end—though he says that was the hardest part of the sequence, which took "36 or 37 takes" to get right. The whole thing was shot on a custom set built—including the man-made waterfall—on a lake in Vallermo, Calif. One final piece of trivia from the G4 clip: Smelling Mustafa in person can lead to pregnancy in women. Via Consumerist.

Filed under Nudd, Old Spice, Personal care, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (2)

Nike's World Cup ad curse captured in video

Yesterday, we wrote about the curse of Nike's "Write the Future" spot, with the ad's major stars underperforming so woefully at the World Cup. Helpfully illustrating the point is the handy "Write the Future" remix above, with pre- and in-tournament footage showing just how bleak many of the players' futures turned out to be in South Africa. On a related note, check out the interview below that Eleftheria Parpis did in Cannes last week with Eric Quennoy and Mark Bernath, co-creative directors on the "Write the Future" project at Wieden + Kennedy in Amsterdam. They talk about giving Adidas a run for their money and how they reversed the traditional distribution model in getting this spot noticed worldwide.

Filed under Nike, Nudd, Soccer, Wieden + Kennedy, World Cup
Permalink | Comments (4)

'I'm on a horse' guy makes Old Spice return

His first Old Spice ad was just voted the best commercial of the past year at Cannes, and now Isaiah Mustafa is back with an encore. In this new Wieden + Kennedy spot, he log-rolls, walks on water, shows off the cake he baked in the "dream kitchen" he built himself, does a "swan dive" and winds up in a hot tub. At the end, he's perched proudly on a motorcycle instead of a horse. "So, ladies," he says. "Should your man smell like an Old Spice man? You tell me." Hard to argue with the awesomeness.

Filed under Nudd, Old Spice, Personal care, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (10)

Curse of the Nike ad hits World Cup players

Wieden + Kennedy's flashy "Write the Future" spot for the World Cup was great fun to watch, but most of the talk now is about how it might have cursed the players it featured—particularly its six major stars.
  Let's go to the replay:
  Didier Drogba: broke his arm, Ivory Coast eliminated
  Fabio Cannavaro: captained underwhelming Italy, which was eliminated
  Wayne Rooney: didn't score, England eliminated
  Franck Ribéry: French team imploded and were then eliminated
  Ronaldinho: Didn't even make the Brazilian team
  Cristiano Ronaldo: scored once, Portugal eliminated
  Clearly, the less optimistic futures these players envisioned in the spot were the correct ones. It remains to be seen whether Rooney, in particular, will now grow a beard and live in a trailer. (The previously fictitious headline "England In Roo-Ins," from the commercial, did make its way to the top of at least one real media story.)
  Perhaps due to its sudden lack of endorsers left in the tournament, Nike has rolled out the new spot below, starring Brazil's Robinho, who leads his team in shots with 10, has scored a goal and whose team managed to make the quarterfinals.
  UPDATE: Continuing the curse, Roger Federer lost today at Wimbledon. Bucking the trend are two other cameo stars from the ad: Kobe Bryant, whose L.A. Lakers won the NBA Finals, and Homer Simpson, who was recently named the greatest TV character of the past 20 years.

Filed under Nike, Nudd, Soccer, Wieden + Kennedy, World Cup
Permalink | Comments (15)

Get your melodic feet in Nike musical shoes

Wieden + Kennedy's Tokyo office teamed with Japanese hip-hop artists Hifana for this clip, released a few months ago, in which Nike sneakers are tricked out as musical instruments. The shoes were wired through a digital system and bent to produce what sounds like electronic distortion in a bad Moby song. Which is every Moby song, by the way. There's also a making-of video, posted after the jump. It took an engineering team and lots of Macbooks and software development to make the shoes sing. NASA didn't use this much technology to send men to the moon. I kept expecting someone to crack a joke about "sole music," but if the subtitles are accurate, the artists and crew showed amazing restraint.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Click to read more ...

Filed under Footwear, Gianatasio, Japan, Nike, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (2)

Nike's app now urges you to write the future

Wieden + Kennedy's "Write the Future" soccer spot, created for this World Cup, is already legendary. Now, the agency has unveiled a related interactive element in the campaign—a Twitter and Facebook integration that asks the public to write the future of their favorite players in a few brief words—with the best submissions put up in lights on the electric facade of the Life Centre building in Johannesburg. The Facebook app is here. Check out the video for more.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Nike, Nudd, Soccer, Wieden + Kennedy, World Cup
Permalink | Comments (6)

Dodge puts ad's patriotic innards on display

Few commercials are worth the behind-the-scenes videos showing their creation. Nike's "Write the Future" and Sony Bravia's "Balls" would be among the exceptions. Wieden + Kennedy thinks its new "Freedom" spot for the Dodge Challenger, featuring George Washington leading a charge against the English in a pure American muscle car, deserves the treatment. It put together the four-minute on-shoot video posted below, via its W+K Entertainment division, that shows how the spot was made and how Chrysler, just a year removed from bankruptcy, is not scared of putting big money into ad production.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Filed under Automotive, Dodge, Morrissey, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (3)

New Dodge ad kicks some revolutionary ass

If there's one thing American automakers have had a harder time making than high-quality cars, it's high-quality car commercials. Which is why Dodge deserves a big pat on the bumper for the Challenger ad below, which is awesome for a whole Continental Army of reasons. Hat tip to my friend Jon, via RideLust.

—Posted by David Griner

Filed under Automotive, Dodge, Griner, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (17)

Wieden's ESPN murals celebrate World Cup

Having already rolled out one of the all-time-great soccer commercials for this World Cup (on behalf of Nike), Wieden + Kennedy is also proudly showing off 32 World Cup murals—one for each country participating—it created for ESPN, with the help of South African illustration house Am I Collective. You can see them all here on Flickr. Also, they're slowly rolling out at Vanity Fair, which is basing its World Cup preview blurbs around the images. The Wieden team instructed the illustrators to create the murals in the style of 1980s Ghanaian movie posters. It took nine people three solid months to create the finals. The campaign comprises print, outdoor (including hand-painted versions), digital and an art book. The work celebrates each country's culture and soccer history. The only ticked-off fans might be the Australians, whose Old Spice-like poster shows a player with a kangeroo's hindquarters.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under ESPN, Nudd, Soccer, TV, Wieden + Kennedy, World Cup
Permalink | Comments (2)

Dodge minivans great for masked standoffs

The Dodge Grand Caravan is an all-purpose vehicle, whether you need to ferry the kids to soccer practice or consummate shady business deals requiring you and your henchmen to wear kittens masks in a showdown with a bunch of dirty rats. An Eyes Wide Shut-style orgy scene seems the next logical step. By Wieden + Kennedy. Full credits here. Via Jalopnik.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Animals, Automotive, Dodge, Nudd, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (2)

Behind the scenes of Nike's World Cup spot

Since Nike's "Write the Future" spot came out last week, many in the industry have come down with a bad case of ad envy. The epic ad gets the behind-the-scenes treatment in the four-minute video below. It shows director Alejandro Iñárritu discussing the concept behind the video, and features interviews with Wayne Rooney and Didier Drogba. The Wieden + Kennedy creative team don't get any screen time to tell how the idea originated ­or what kind of production budget it took to get it done.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey

Filed under Nike, Soccer, Wieden + Kennedy, World Cup
Permalink | Comments (4)

Nike glimpses future in epic World Cup spot

If this doesn't get you in the World Cup spirit, nothing will. It's Nike's new three-minute "Write the Future" spot by Wieden + Kennedy, featuring some of the world's top players seeing into the future, Dead Zone-like, and glimpsing the consequences of their play at this year's tournament. Watch it here, at a column width that does it a little more justice. If it's not the best soccer commercial ever made, I don't know what is. Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney—the former Man U teammates and famous foes in that fateful England-Portugal quarterfinal in 2006—are the main stars here, though there are many others, including non-soccer heroes Roger Federer, Kobe Bryant and Homer Simpson. Alejandro G. Iñarritu (Babel, 21 Grams) was the director. The only possible gripe you could have is that the commercial also prominently features Brazil's Ronaldinho. Alas, he didn't make the cut for this year's team.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Nike, Nudd, Soccer, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (9)

Nike CEO defends Tiger Woods commercial

Here's Nike CEO Mark Parker speaking about Tiger Woods at last week's Innovation Uncensored conference in New York, hosted by Fast Company. Asked how tough it's been to stick by Woods from a PR standpoint, Parker says it actually "hasn't been that difficult"—that they've supported him, plain and simple, and been consistent about that. He goes on to talk about Wieden + Kennedy's controversial Nike ad with the Earl Woods voiceover, and is obviously thrilled to have created "clearly one of the most polarizing ads I think that we've had out in a while."

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Golf, Nike, Nudd, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (4)

Honda gives 'Impossible Dream' new ending

Honda's classic "Impossible Dream" commercial from Wieden + Kennedy gets even more impossible in this new, extended version now airing across Europe. Instead of floating away in the hot-air balloon over the waterfalls, our hero now continues his journey in a Honda jet and a Honda hydrogen-powered car—and even runs into Honda's robot, Asimo, who apparently has returned from his goodwill trip to Canada. At two and a half minutes, the extended version is 30 seconds longer than the original, and is intended to show the future of the brand. Says a Honda rep: " 'Impossible Dream' is a fantastic opportunity to showcase both historic and future products in a film that truly generates a strong reaction from everyone who sees it."

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Automotive, Honda, Nudd, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (4)

Adweek's Barbara Lippert on Nike's Tiger ad

On CBS's The Early Show this morning, Adweek critic Barbara Lippert offered her take on Wieden's new Nike ad with Tiger Woods. For Barbara, the commercial is "powerful, creepy and cynical, but it does what Nike needed to do." See the video after the jump.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Click to read more ...

Filed under Celebrity endorsements, Golf, Nike, Nudd, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (5)

Nike unveils embarrassing new Woods spot

Here's the new Nike spot from Wieden + Kennedy that broke Wednesday ahead of Tiger Woods's return at the Masters. It's pretty cringeworthy. It shows Woods soberly looking into the camera, as you hear his late father Earl. "I want to find out what your thinking was," Earl says. "I want to find out what your feelings are. And did you learn anything?" It's comical that Nike is now sponsoring Woods's atonement, which of course cheapens it—and then you throw Earl Woods into the mix, and it cheapens him, too. Woods isn't the devil, but he did embarrass himself and his sport—did they consider maybe not packaging that into a stylish and "meaningful" 30-second sales pitch? For all his talk about being more humble, this ad shows that Woods hasn't changed, and explains a lot about how he got himself in so much trouble in the first place. UPDATE: Jason Piroth puts it more succinctly. In one sentence, in fact.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Celebrity endorsements, Golf, Nike, Nudd, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (25)

Old Spice blows up more Terry Crews spots

Old Spice and Wieden + Kennedy broke three new spots last week for Odor Blocker Body Wash featuring ex-NFL player Terry Crews shouting, punching and kicking his way through odor. Here are three more that rolled out over the weekend—a :30 below (in which we get to travel way, way inside Crews's lovely-smelling armpit, then see him riding a tiger) and two :15s after the jump. Simply explosive.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Click to read more ...

Filed under Nudd, Old Spice, Personal care, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (18)

Big muscly dude blocks odor with Old Spice

More insane, awesome Old Spice work from Wieden + Kennedy. This time, we get a bodybuilder who punches, kicks, blocks and generally destroys odor—and everything else in his path—in the service of Odor Blocker Body Wash. This guy's on something, and it's not a horse. Plus, he has these crazy talking abdominals. Two more ads after the jump.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Click to read more ...

Filed under Nudd, Old Spice, Personal care, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (9)

Old Spice smells like a successful mountain

Here's the latest Old Spice spot from Wieden + Kennedy, advertising a new deodorant scent called Matterhorn, described as "a triumphantly fresh scent that smells like the world's most successful mountain." The product demo shows a fresh, snow-covered peak erupting from a guy's armpit, allowing him to expertly carve turkey and blocks of ice into shapes that are pleasing to his blonde companion. There are three other new scents, too. All four make an appearance in this brief spot, and are ranked "fresh, fresher, freshest, freshershist."

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Filed under Nudd, Old Spice, Personal care, Wieden + Kennedy
Permalink | Comments (5)