News
Wish I’d done that
I was invited to contribute to the regular feature “Wish I’d done that” for the March 2010 issue of IMJ (Irish Marketing Journal). Every month, a senior executive in the advertising & marketing community is asked to talk about recent advertising that caught their attention.
It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve seen something that made me really think ‘I wish I’d done that’.
It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve seen something that made me really think ‘I wish I’d done that’.
Maybe it’s me– perhaps as I get older, I get more difficult to please.
Maybe it’s because when it comes to producing advertising, we’re forced to start with a checklist and try and work an idea around it.
Maybe – or is that probably? – because we’ve lost the ability to be brave.
Ending an ad with the words “I‘m on a Horse” is brave.
Aiming an ad for a male grooming product directly at the target viewer’s wife/girlfriend is very brave. Telling them that said boyfriend/husband is probably very average looking and smells like a girl is incredibly brave.
In the opening half of Old Spice’s “The man your man could smell like”, our hero seduces our womenfolk with the following plea “Hello ladies. Look at your man. Now back to me. Now back at your man. Now back to me. Sadly he isn’t me. But if he stopped using lady scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he’s me.”
The nerve of it!
Astonishingly, apart only from a small sequence where an Oyster shell turns into a handful of diamonds & back to a packshot – this ad was captured in one take, bringing our hero from a bathroom, to a boat to the back of a horse in one seamless move.
The icing on the cake is the awesome performance of actor Isaiah Mustafa with his silky voice and chiselled body. How brave to have this picture perfect Adonis charm our women and expect us to buy shower products from him!
What I really like about this ad is that while it appears ‘random’, it is firmly based on sound consumer insight. Old Spice discovered that men are introduced to body wash by trying out their partners products. One simple consumer truth brought magically to life without being weighed down with enough product claims to sink a ship.
By instructing our women to look at us and then back to him, this ad masterfully engages both sexes. It makes a brand that was firmly anchored in our grandfathers’ era part of the conversation again.
And that conversation has continued way beyond TV. At the time of writing, in less than 3 weeks the ad’s been viewed 4 million times on YouTube. The brand’s Facebook page has over 527,000 fans where the ad has had 20,000 ‘likes’ and 10,000 comments.
The Social Web has been ablaze with consumers talking about and sharing the ad on blogs, Facebook pages and with links in tweets. It has already hit Marketing Nirvana by becoming part of the vernacular with numerous parodies already bouncing across the web. Most notably, an Apple fan calling on geeks to “Take a look at your phone, now back at mine” mimicking the ad to poke fun at iPhone competitors; and two Country & Western fans singing the ad’s script to the tune of John Denver’s “You fill up my senses”.
Closer to home, I really love the way O2 has leveraged their Sponsorship of the Irish Rugby Team. Rather than blow the budget telling us how great they are sponsoring the team, they have focussed their energies on devising imaginative ways to allow the ordinary fan become part of the game through their ongoing ‘Be the difference’ campaign.
There are two ways consumers can get involved. One way is to sign up to have your name on a team member’s jersey during the game. (My name appeared on Paul O’Connell’s for the French game, made all the more impressive because I am a Vodafone customer!). The second is to record a team talk, played in the stadium before the matches. Recruitment is online or via digital screens in bars and there have been some clever extensions like the bespoke promotion running on Newstalk’s ‘fanzone’ styled sports show “Off the Ball”. This is smart thinking as it hands over the keys to the brand to the Opinion Formers who listen to this show and allows them a role in shaping the brand.
This shows real understanding that branding in the digital era is defined by the experience and is created as much by the communities it attracts as anything the marketing department controls.
Now I wonder if Drico uses Old Spice…
Old Spice ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE
John Denver tribute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDo46bfxUP4
Apple Parody: http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DxzwLOqC2kVI
Be the difference: http://www.bethedifference.ie
Be the difference Newstalk Promotion: http://www.newstalk.ie/programmes/all/offtheball/win-a-trip-for-two-to-see-france-v-ireland-in-paris-with-thanks-to-bethedifference-ie638/