Going Viral: The Old Spice Guy and Social Media

Jul. 21, 2010

We're sure that by now many of you have heard about the Old Spice social media campaign that has become a viral sensation. The whole thing started with some brilliant, entertaining commercials for Old Spice Bodywash which featured former NFL wide receiver, Isaiah Mustafa as "the man your man could smell like," a suave, hyper-masculine Old Spice spokesman who is, according to Old Spice, the man all women wish they could be with, and all men wish they could be.

The commercials were such a success that Old Spice and the masterminds behind the original commercials, Wieden + Kennedy, decided to take the campaign to social media. On July 13 Old Spice tweeted the following and what resulted was a viral campaign that swept through social media.

Old Spice Viral Campaign Tweet

For an entire day, July 13th, anyone who tweeted a message or question to @OldSpice had the chance to get a direct video response written personally for them and given by Mustafa on YouTube. The idea was an immediate hit and within a few hours Old Spice was one of the most popular trending topics on Twitter and millions of tweets were sent with the hopes of receiving a personalized response. During the course of the day, which eventually culminated in a final, "As with all good things, this too must end," farewell video, over 180 videos were produced.

What were some of the major results of the campaign?

A Google search for Old Spice under "updates" (which are pulled from Twitter) showed over 10 million of results
Old Spice's YouTube Channel is the #1 most viewed YouTube Channel this week and each response video has received between 100,000 and 2.7 million views in the first week, while the commercial that started it all, "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" has earned over 14 million views
Old Spice's official Twitter account @OldSpice increased its followers by over 1000% in less than a week

Obviously the campaign reached an enormous amount of people and was quickly spread through word of mouth helping the campaign go viral almost instantly, but why did it go viral? What was it about this campaign that encouraged people to spread it via word of mouth? Well, we've taken a look at the many different aspects of the campaign (and shamelessly watched a large quantity of the responses) and we've determined the following characteristics that helped the campaign have such success.

What made this campaign go viral?

They gave their audience something without asking for anything in return. All you had to do to get a response from Old Spice Guy was to tweet something to him. Pretty easy, huh? You didn't have to give them your information, sign up for a demo, or fill in a single form. All that they required from their audience was their engagement.
They chose their influencers wisely.The majority of the tweets that garnered responses were from well known influencers in the social media sphere. Everyone from Demi Moore, to Kevin Rose (the found of Digg), Gizmodo and Ellen Degeneres received responses. While there were responses sent to some average joes, most of them were sent to social media users with large followings, which helped the campaign spread quickly as those influencers that received responses retweeted them to their thousands of followers.
They engaged their audience in the campaign itself. This wasn't a passive advertising campaign. Old Spice took their campaign to their audience and challenged their social media friends, followers and fans to engage with the company to create the campaign from their interests.
They made the campaign feel personal. All of the responses had a personal feel, and included the original tweet to show the one-on-one nature of the conversation, despite the fact that it was streamed to millions of people.
They were funny.Nothing makes something spread faster than pure amusement. The videos themselves were ironic, funny and genuinely entertaining and regardless of the motives behind it, or the people chosen to spread it, this was most likely reason enough for the majority of people to pass it around.
They used a widely available platform. All of the videos were uploaded to YouTube a platform with a low barrier of entry so the responses were available to a wide range of people, quickly and easily.