Yes yes – I know I am late to the party with the Old Spice Buzz, but I must say first hand that Old Spice’s most recent, world famous, marketing campaign is by far the best advertising I have ever seen. From all angles, they successfully bridged the gap between television and social media marketing…raising the bar to a whole new level.
So what did they do that makes them so special? Well, let’s go over the Old Spice Marketing timeline and take an in depth look at how they won the hearts of millions of people all over the world.
The Beginning:
It ALL started Super Bowl weekend – with these 2 commercials:
Their are 3 very important aspects about these videos:
1.) It’s the same actor (Isaiah Mustafa) in each video, essentially branding him as a mascot for the company.
2.) The script itself is extremely funny.
3.) Isaiah Mustafa is actually a funny person and a great actor.
At this point, Old Spice just has a few good commercials they are advertising heavily, giving a good chuckle, which leads to the next point in the timeline.
The start of the buzz:
In early March, Isaiah Mustafa was featured on the Ellen DeGeneres show. During the show, Mustafa gains personal and company recognition by using his charm and swagger to win over the audience. Not only is this great for Mustafa’s career, but this is completely free advertising for Old Spice, on one of the most popular shows on television. Mustafa went on to appear on several other talk shows after this.
Capitalizing on Social Media:
This is truly where Old Spice separated themselves from having a great campaign, to taking the world by storm. At the beginning of July, they launched a Youtube campaign – responding to tweets coming to the Old Spice Twitter account. In these videos, Mustafa personally replies to tweets in his Old Spice commercial form, ranging from marriage proposals, to personal shout outs. An example of a few are below:
These responses, are not only funny, but also creates a huge connection between consumers and the company. The opportunity to have “THE” Old Spice spokesperson take the time out of his day to talk to YOU gives users that special feeling of “The Old Spice Guy is the man!”, and most likely makes a person’s day. Once word got out that Old Spice was doing this, the viralbility of these videos literally exploded with millions of views a day. TONS of tweets, followers, comments and praise all came with it. And yes, all for much cheaper than the cost of a TV commercial.
Spread of the Buzz
Perhaps the MOST valuable part of all of this is the community reaction to the videos. There have been thousands of parody videos popping up on Youtube modeling after the Old Spice commercials. A great example of this was done by the BYU Marketing department trying to advertise their library usage.
This is all FREE marketing. Millions upon millions of views for free. Yes, it may be done in a joking manner, but everyone knows what company the videos are a parody of, and more importantly, it imprints the brand into a consumer’s brain.
Final thoughts:
Old Spice does an incredible job at building a connection with their consumers. We have recently seen how much social media has helped the careers of celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Chad Ocho Cinco. What’s even more interesting is that what Old Spice did is not all too hard to replicate. Companies who reach out to their target market, and create a type of personalization between the company and consumer will simply be more liked in general. I personally WANT to see Old Spice succeed after seeing their efforts to reach out to their consumers. My personal opinion is that body wash is body wash. It’s basically the same thing regardless of companies, and all runs for around the same price. When I am at the store picking out my soap, it really doesn’t make a difference to me what kind I get, and I simply rely on my personal bias to make my purchase decision. Being said, next time I’m at the store, I’m sure you can guess which soap I’m going to chose
The biggest problem newbies experience, is that after spending hours developing a solid landing page, getting a keyword list, finding the best offers, and coming up with a solid ad variation – they run their campaign, blow through their money without a single lead to show for it. They then quit on their campaign as they haven’t even sniffed a positive result from hours of effort. This happens to almost everyone – so don’t worry! The following is a list of key points that all newbies should strive to attain, and to know when their campaign really wasn’t a waste of time:
1.) Make sure you have a good niche! How can you expect to get hundreds of leads a day when you don’t even know if there is that many people looking to buy your product? Sure you can be the first to exploit a niche, but leave that to the big guys. If you are just starting out, you don’t need to make things any harder than they have to be.
2.) Find the leads! Regardless if you spent $100 or $1000 on your campaign, if you haven’t generated any leads – then all you know is that atleast ONE variable within your keywords, landing page, offers, ad variations, bid price, and ad position combination does NOT work. You need to distinguish what variables need adjustments and which doesn’t, and the only way to do this is to compare results between what is working. The problem is that if you don’t have any leads to use with your data – it’ll be very hard to make adjustments because in essence – you have no idea what is working. The first step in the right direction is to FIND as many leads as you can, and try to optimize your efforts to more leads in that realm. This is why it’s important to make sure you are promoting a hot niche. You KNOW the leads are out there… Go find them!
3.) Don’t give up – I can’t stress this enough. The only real money you lose is when you don’t learn from your mistakes. Keep grinding until you’ve tried every combination of keywords, ad variations, landing page, offers, position and bid price as you can.
The big thing ALL newbies should know, is that if you just keep at it, you will hit your campaign! Even if it takes 20 swings until you hit, that hit will be ever so sweet. Once you hit your first campaign, everything starts to make alot more sense in your mind, and your experience starts to kick in. Affiliate marketing is like developing an extra muscle in your brain. It’s tough at first, but once you get the hang of it – it becomes much easier to hit more campaigns. Enjoy the ride!
What’s your attitude towards scaling? So you have a landing page which converts, you have a great relationship with the network/merchant and a traffic source. Great! There’s just one problem: most people limit themselves to milking that one traffic source for all it’s worth and then that’s it, end of story.
Why would you do something like that? Don’t you like money? Would you have liked money more if the bills were blue instead of green? Why just that one traffic source? There’s a lot of money on the table, why are you limiting yourself to just that one piece of the pie?
What Scaling REALLY Means
Ok, so you’ve milked traffic source A for all it’s worth? Alright, then move on to traffic source B and then to traffic source C. That’s scaling. Keep the engines running and don’t take your foot off the pedal when it comes to the traffic sources you’re already on top of but on the other hand, always be on the lookout for more traffic.
It’s a never-ending process, expression such as “ok, I’ve scaled, now what?” don’t exist unless you trick yourself into thinking that they do. New traffic sources emerge on a daily basis, why not be there with your wallet open?
Polish Your Negotiation Skills
One word: Facebook! If that’s not a love-hate relationship, nothing is. This is what happens when people depend on just one traffic source: you’re in no position to negotiate. Lots of people were/are earning a living exclusively on Facebook and given their track record, those folks are definitely skating on thin ice.
Once you realize that there’s not just one website which controls everything in terms of traffic, you’ll start being in a far better position to negotiate. This is extremely important when it comes to media buys. Get ready to negotiate everything, absolutely everything. Think everything through carefully before spending your first buck: if they want your money, they need to make the deal worthwhile for you as well. If not, you’ll simply move on and never look back. End of story.
This much is certain: we’re marketers and as a result, hunting down traffic sources is what we do. Depending on just one traffic source is a sign of weakness, plain and simple. If you don’t up your game and start demanding the most bang for your buck as an advertiser, traffic networks can and will take advantage of you.
After 2 years of development, BeVo Media's expected open beta date is October 1st. BeVo Media is now accepting beta tester applicants. If you are a webmaster, search marketer, media buyer, or PPC Firm, you may be eligible to be a beta tester. Please contact ryan@bevomedia.com to get on the beta tester list.
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