Old Spice Guy - What's it mean for NPOs?

(*Warning: Obligatory blog posting on the Old Spice Guy follows... if you have reached your "overload point" on OSG, please click here. There are currently over 462K results when you do a Google search for blogs mentioning "Old Spice Guy")

I will assume that you know about the tidal wave of marketing force that hit the internet last week with Old Spice Guy (a.k.a. Isaiah Mustafa) moving the campaign from fun television commercials to a strong web presence to video Twitter replies and a viral marketing storm that some have dubbed "the best viral campaign ever."

Really? Best ever? Hmm... depends on what the goals are, but I'll get to that in a bit. This post is to look at the campaign Through Non-Profit Eyes and offer a few pros, cons and NPO takeaways from The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.

The pros:

• From Old Spice's point-of-view, they have over 650,000 Facebook fans and 87,000 Twitter followers, most of whom have joined as a result of this campaign. (Old Spice had ~8,000 Twitter followers & 563,000 Facebook fans pre-campaign)
• The campaign itself was fun.
• It was different - replying to tweets w/video had not been done on such a mass scale and with such speedy production.
• The response from the general public has been overwhelmingly positive.

The cons:

• How many containers of Old Spice body wash have or will be sold due to this campaign?
• Why did it end so soon? (after 48 hours)

Regarding ending soon... note Coca-Cola's slide on social media campaigns. Coke has had great success in the social media world:

The takeaways, Through Non-Profit Eyes:

• When it comes to having something go viral, having fun is more important than trying really hard. Case in point:

Those people are having more fun than I’ve ever seen anyone have in a shoot like this. That’s part of why it’s doing so well. It’s genuinely infectious. - Iain Tait, the global interactive creative director for Wieden + Kennedy, the agency behind the campaign

• Be willing to take the risk of being different. This is a tricky one for NPOs... most take themselves way too seriously. The challenge is striking the balance between your mission and having fun. It is probably easier to find a humorous campaign around deodorant body wash than building water wells in Africa. But it can be done (as illustrated by the Humane Society). It can also fail miserably.
• Use celebrities when you can... but don't let them overtake the campaign. In reality, people became a fan of Mustafa more than they did Old Spice. That is being lost in many of the "OSG is the holy grail of a social campaign" stories. A non-profit campaign can benefit from the exposure and attention a celebrity can provide, but make sure the focus is still on the campaign. Two notes: 1) "Celebrity" can have various definitions - we cannot all have The Edge behind our efforts or Brad Pitt raising money for us. A celebrity can be your CEO or a local television or radio personality... not necessarily an international paparazzi target. As a side note... Alyssa Milano, who recently won a DoSomething award for her philanthropic work, took advantage - brilliantly! - of her engagement with the OSG campaign. OSG had originally responded to one of Milano's tweets. To which she made a video response including a request to OSG for $100,000 to help with gulf clean-up efforts. The video is at the end of this post. Frankly, it would be hard to imagine Old Spice and parent company Proctor & Gamble not ponying up the $100K, because that would end their campaign's success on a down note. Milano has serious Twitter power - they shouldn't fight that.
• Give up some of the bureaucratic control that dominates most non-profits. Part of the beauty of the OSG campaign was that the ads - particularly the video replies - were made quickly. That meant the executives had to surrender control and trust those at the ground level of the campaign. This is probably even more challenging at non-profits who often insist on endless levels of red tape.
• Old Spice listened. Think about your NPO's campaigns - how often have you used the information or comments you've received from your constituents to continue the campaign? I'm guessing not very often. The NPO world has an unfortunate history of just pushing our information out, rather than listening.
• Speed & simplicity matters. For the campaign to go viral, it was critical that it was fast (as mentioned above) and simple. Keeping an NPO's campaign simple often runs against instincts. Often, those that know the most about an NPO are the ones working on its campaigns... therefore, stating the most basic information seems elementary. Remember, your audience doesn't know everything you do and it is okay to focus on the basics.

The OSG's sign-off video:

Milano's pitch:



Silverfish Hand Catch!

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