Social Media Case Study: Old Spice
My attention was drawn by a simple commercial:
I think the beauty of Old Spice’s traditional and new media campaign is that the brand isn’t afraid to stay true to its roots, try new things, and push the envelope to capture your attention and ultimately buy their product. Lets take a look at how Old Spice has been able to capture a large social following and entertain people while selling their product.
The Brand
Old Spice is a man’s deodorant. Everything about the brand exaggerates the fact that only real manly men wear Old Spice. Take a look at how each social profile and outlet further pushes the brand:
Videos
I absolutely love the videos. They’re funny, clearly use and advertise the product, and push the “man” brand. Take a look at the Arm Wrestling one below:
I just checked out the FB Fan Page for one of my favorite quotes of all time! Too bad they took it off. The description on the FB Old Spice Fan Page used to read:
“If your Grandfather never wore it, then you would never have been born”
Now it reads:
“Old Spice has 71 years of experience helping guys improve their mansmells with deodorant, antiperspirant and fragrances.”
Definitely not as fun, but they had to change it sometime.
Close up on Facebook
With over 400,000 fans, the Old Spice Facebook Fan Page is very active. When you look at the wall, you’ll notice that each wall posting has over 400 Likes and 200 Comments. This is excellent for a company and you pretty much can’t get anymore community participation.
I feel that a key element to notice is how far apart Old Spice’s wall postings are spread apart. Today is January 23rd, 2010. Since January 1st, Old Spice has only had 2 wall postings:
- January 15, 2010: If manliness were a color, what color would it be? Probably grey or brown or something. Or dark blue.
- 455 Likes
- 493 Comments
- January 7, 2010: Keyshawn Johnson is going to tell us which NFL teams have the most Swagger. Swagger the attribute, not Swagger the Old Spice product. We don’t know which NFL team uses the most Swagger product, because we’re not invited into the locker rooms anymore. Watch Keyshawn on FOX & Friends this Friday morning.
- 207 Likes
- 120 Comments
Old Spice is keeping its community engaged once per week and not posting daily so that its community is not bombarded with information. At the same time, I feel that Old Spice could greatly improve engagement by consistently showcasing and promoting sweepstakes that fans can participate in.
For example: The Swaggerize You Wallet Competition
This is an excellent competition where users submit a video to participate in a competition and the winner gets money. The Swaggerize Your Wallet page seems to have a lot of video participation; however, I don’t see any mention of the competition on Facebook (besides the two video winners) or on Twitter. It seems that with such an involved community, Old Spice can take advantage of it and make the competition a user-votes-for-the-winner competition.
Old Spice could easily create a Facebook Application where a user can upload a video and then vote on his or her favorite participants. The user is then able to share her favorite videos with her friends on Facebook and thus get more eyeballs on the competition.
Yes, I know that this was more of a Summer Competition, but where is the follow up competition that builds on top of the buzz created by the first one? It’s great for Old Spice to enter the game and keep people excited, but if Old Spice doesn’t continue to push the envelope and give their fans something to participate in, its competitors (like Right Guard or Axe) can swoop in with a competition of their own.
Awesome, transparent products
Old Spice is doing an excellent job with its product pages. As you can see from the link, Old Spice posts all Positive and Negative reviews on its site no matter what (of course if you’re belligerent, they’ll go ahead and remove you). This kind of transparency only encourages the viewer to find out more about the product and has a higher possibilty of turning into a sale.
Useless Blog
You would think that a company as fun as Old Spice would have a vibrant blog that captivates its readers and brings them something of value. Nothing could be further from this than the Old Spice Blog.
It’s really a wonder why they have given their blog such a prominent position in the top menu of their site. It’s even slightly colored yellow so that people will notice it and click on it.
When you read the content, it’s boring and bland with no multi-media images or visitor participation. My recommendation to Old Spice is that if its not going to effectively use its blog, then it should remove it from the top menu of the site.
Useless Twitter
I know that numbers don’t matter on Twitter; however, to only have 215 followers means that Old Spice is definitely not providing any value with its Twitter.
Do you know what I would be doing if I were Old Spice? I would be monitoring the Twittersphere for anyone talking about the following topics:
- Deodorant
- Body Odor
- Right Guard
- Axe
- Smelling good
These are just some of the keywords that Old Spice should be monitoring and responding to in order to build a conversation. They have completely missed the mark with their Twitter.
Awesome Store
I must admit, Old Spice has a really cool online store. They have manly products for real men, which keeps in line with the brand. I feel that a great opportunity here is to give out these products as prizes for competitions. Most people have no idea that Old Spice has other “fan” oriented products. By giving out the products to fans that participate in competitions, Old Spice will further spread brand awareness and get more people to promote their products.
-
Conclusion
Old Spice has a terrific brand. People are obviously fans of the product, and Old Spice only needs to mobilize them in a specific direction to harness the power of the community. Facebook is their best bet, and the addition of more competitions will encourage user interaction, user generated content, and the continuous domination of the male deodorant product.
I take personal offense at what you say about a worthless Old Spice- blogsite!
As to weither or not the posts there are taken into consideration by P & G remains to be seen.
At times Ive personally seen my suggestions put into play. Likeswise Ive had comments censored,so I know someone saw what I wrote!
The shame of what seems to be applauded about the new marketing direction of Old Spice;is the tremendous disenfranchising of loyal customers who have supported the brand for decades!
What we loved about the spice scent the Shulton Company produced has been altered.
The look of the glass buoy bottles,now comes in plastic-which is lighter to transport (freight cost);but some feel it cheapens the product.
The Origional scent was renamed “Classic” during the scent alteration.
Less companion items such as,Body Spray;hints of a possible future phaseout.
Sales have dropped off tremendously due to fragrance change of the Origional!
The new direction P & G wants to take the image of Old Spice, is away from the Sailor connection which was tied to the ships on the bottle; and steer towards: Sports Fans,20 year olds, Black Men, and Women who love Black Men!
The rest of us can either get lost, or cling to whatever is left that resembles what we loved about the product.
Like I said in one of my posts there: Thats like taking your Grandpappy out into the alley behind the store and telling him;”this is your new status in life, we dont want people to think about YOU,when they are thinking about US!”
Thats what P & Gs new marketing strategy is all about!
Heh, Jun…I think they saw your post because while some of your points are still semi valid, Old Spice decided to destroy the social media realm with their viral video’s. Awesome critique on what they needed to fix…and it looks like they did.
Just an update… Twitter is NOT useless:
http://twitter.com/oldspice